Drilling Fluid Management & Disposal
Drilling fluid waste management and solids control of drilling mud related technical and developed situation.
Proper application and utilization of mechanical solids control equipment enables the driller to maintain the desired drilling fluid properties which in turn makes it possible for the drilling operation to be carried out in an efficient and possible for the drilling operation to be carried out in an efficient and economical manner.
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This section provides additional thoughts and considerations concerning solids-control equipment. The practical operational guidelines for equipment discussed here may not apply to all drilling applications. These guidelines (in italics) were developed as part of API RP 13C. The discussion beneath each captures some of the comments by committee members as they debated the guideline before approval.
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Hoppers, mud guns, desanders, desilters, degassers, and triplex pumps requiring supercharging all have one thing in common: they require 76–80 feet of inlet head to operate as designed. Exceptions do exist, and the equipment manufacturer should be consulted. This simplifies the job of sizing centrifugal pumps. Since most applications in drilling systems require 80 feet of head at the inlet of the equipment, knowledge of volume needed by each piece of equipment is required. Following are standard flow rates when equipment has an 80-foot inlet head:
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Drilling fluids normally contain two categories of solids: (1) commercial clays and drilled solids, both low gravity, with specific gravities (SGs) of about 2.6, and (2) weighting agents, usually barite, with an assumed SG of 4.2. If all of the solids particles were of the same size, decanter centrifuges could be used to separate the weighting agent from the low-gravity solids, because the barite particles, due to their higher SG, would be heavier. Drilling fluids, of course, are not slurries of particles of equal size. Weighted drilling fluids always contain solids of both categories, ranging from colloidal particles too fine to settle, even in pure water, to particles 70 microns () in size and larger. Consequently, the centrifuge cannot separate barite from low-gravity solids. What it does, when operated properly, is separate larger barite particles from smaller ones and larger low-gravity-solids particles from smaller ones. Failure to recognize this very important fact frequently leads to the misuse of centrifuges.
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