Drilling mud facility: Storage & treatment of drilling mud

Challenge:
Drilling mud or drilling fluid contains several components which are valuable. A part of the backflow of used drilling fluid also has value because it contains recyclable components.

The challenge of the customer was to remove the polluting elements from used drilling fluid and reuse the valuable components. This involved :

• The containment of used drilling fluid
• The separation of abrasive pollutants and a very small component of oil in a batch process
• Continually checking the quality of the drilling fluid and the requirement for added chemicals

Solution:
United Rentals engineered a solution consisting of:

• A 4" Electric Stainless Steel ATEX Pump to transfer the drilling fluid from the customer unit to the separation unit and from there to the back-up tanks.
• A 70 m³ Lined Separation Tank for containment and separation; 
• Floating off the minor oil component
• Settling of unwanted abrasive solids
• Extraction of drilling fluid towards an effluent and make-up tank
• 2 x 70 m³ Lined Tanks  were installed as effluent and make-up vessels to add Potassium Chloride (KCl) to enable the drilling fluid to be reused. One Lined Tank was used as a back-up, enabling the analysis of the fluid’s quality, in addition to controlling the flow back towards the drilling process.

Benefits:

With the United Rentals solution in place we provided the customer with options for containment, treatment and transfer using a single pump. The solution enabled recirculation and extraction in various ways and was easy to operate.

Drilling fluid could be checked for quality and improved with chemical additives and subsequently reused, reducing quantities of fresh drilling fluid needed. By limiting the need for fresh drilling fluid the amount of waste disposal was also reduced, saving time, effort and costs.