Drilling waste management system can be divided into 2 kinds when there is a drilling rig for oil and gas. It depends on the procedure of the rig’s solids control system and also the components used during drilling. When there is a drilling rig, there must be some drilling fluids cycling in a system, which is called a solids control system. Just as its name, this system is used to control the solids content in the drilling fluids and to remove the waste particles as many as possible in order to make sure the drilling fluids to reach the standard for reuse. Those waste solids are sands and small stoned brought by the drilling bit from the underground, which are of different sizes. In order to remove them, the solids control system is designed into several stages based on a certain particle size range: shale shaker, desander, desilter and decanter centrifuge.

The shale shaker is the first stage, which is a physical separating with simple principle: vibrating. Normally, the shale shaker can remove particles larger than 100 microns. And the actual separating point is determined by the shaker screens’ API number, which is chosen by the end user. Of course, there is a curve between capacity and cutting point, the finer the separating result is, the smaller capacity it reaches. And it is the shale shaker which remove the most solids particles. But there is a problem, that the particles removed by the shale shakers are still too wet, containing a certain amount of expensive drilling fluids. That’s why it is necessary to have some further treatment of the drilling cuttings from the shale shaker.
Besides the complete solids control system, GN Solids Control also provides professional solutions for drilling cuttings waste management. Just recently, an European client purchased such a system including following:

1.Cuttings feeding section: this section is used to collect the wet cuttings from the shale shaker and feed to the first stage of separating in a waste management system.

2.High G drying shaker section: it is especially designed for the water based mud, it looks similar as a normal shale shaker but with a higher G force.

3.Vertical cuttings dryer section: a vertical cuttings dryer serves same function as a high G drying shaker for the drilling cuttings under condition when oil based mud is used in the drilling system.

4.Screw Conveyor section: this section is used flexibly for transportation purpose between the treating equipment.

In this case, even when the drilling site uses both WBM and OBM, the waste management sections can be used flexibly.