Drilling Fluid Disposal System

Drilling fluid disposal are cost prohibitive, environmentally risky and/or threaten the mechanical integrity of the well. Chemical solidification of the pit contents and disposal into a permitted commercial injection well are expensive, particularly where large quantities of high-chloride (>5,000 ppm) mud are being injected into a commercial disposal. For a typical 14,000 ft well in Western Oklahoma, it would not be unusual to spend $60,000 for either of these methods of disposal.

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THE DIFFERANCE BETWEEN WEIGHTED AND UNWEIGHTED MUDS

Water as a drilling fluid does not qualify as a mud. If there are no hole (formation) problems that prevent its being the most economical drilling fluid; if neither the geologist, palentologist, nor production supervisor have valid objections; and if it is available, water is seldom if ever surpassed. When the formation requires, or a supervisor demands , filtrate control and / or viscosity and /or gels in the drilling fluid, a “mud” is built. Or if the fluid density required is too high for salt water alone , mud properties are required to suspend barites.

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DECANTING CENTRIFUGES

The decanting centrifuge is the only liquid-solids separation device used on drilling fluids that can remove (decant) all free liquid from the separated solids particles, leaving only adsorbed liquid or “bound liquid ,” on the surface area. This adsorbed liquid is not prone to contain solubles, such as chlorides, nor colloidal suspended solids, such as bentonite . The dissolved and suspended solids are associated with the continuous free liquid phase from which the decanting centrifuge separates the inert solids, and are removed with that liquid. The adsorbed liquid can only be removed from the separated solids by evaporation, which has been neither desirable nor practical so far in drilling mud work.

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