Tag Archives: mud tanks

Liquid Mud Plant Provided by GN Solids Control

Liquid mud plant is also called LMP, which is used for preparing, storage and treatment of the drilling mud. In a complete liquid mud plant, there should be 3 mainly drilling mud tanks for different purpose:

1. Mixing Tank.

Mixing tanks are always cuboid shaped mud tanks equipped by mud mixing hoppers. Those hoppers are always Venturi hoppers linked to centrifugal pumps. When pump is sucking mud from one compartment to another, and when mud is passing the Venturi hopper, there will be a sucking force to suck in the chemicals from the hopper.
Mixing tanks have mud agitators and mud guns, too, for stirring up the mud in order to prevent settling down. Meanwhile, there are also pumps for transferring the prepared mud from mixing tank to others.

2. Treating tanks.

When used mud is delivered to the liquid mud plant, the dirty mud shall be treated by separation equipment in order to remove the particles and to be returned to the storage tanks. The separation equipment are mainly shale shakers and decanter centrifuges, and when there are extra fine particles, there should be chemical dosing for flocculating.

3. Storage tanks.

Storage tanks are not complicated in pipelines and always using single guardrails. There are no divided compartments inside a storage tank and the most commonly used equipment are mud agitators and mud guns. Both mud agitators and mud guns are used continuously for stirring the drilling mud from being settled down to the tank bottom. Clean mud will be safely storage in those tanks.

GN Solids Control has 2 kinds of storage tanks available, the cuboid shaped ones and the cylinderic ones, each type has its own advantages.

If you have such project or tender, welcome to contact GN team for consultancy or quotation.

Drilling Fluids Shale Shaker and Mud tank for Offshore Drilling Company

As the crude oil price is increasing stably, the numbers of active drilling rigs is on a rise, too. Among which, quite a lot are offshore rigs working on offshore platforms. Under the oceans, the crude oil reservation is remarkable, and lots of oil companies are joining to the offshore drilling industry. In order to take into consideration of environment protection purpose while drilling, the drilling mud shall be treated in time and to leave the waste to the least.
GN Solids Control has been providing offshore drilling companies for years with the high quality and compact designed mud recycling system. Here is information of a recent project:

1. In this project, the main equipment is shale shaker. Shale shakers are most important for a drilling mud system, which remove most solids particles from the recycled drilling mud. GN has different models of shale shakers, from the mini shale shaker with 2 pcs of screens to the double deck shale shaker with 2 layers holding 6 pcs of shaker screens. Each shale shaker is equipped with 2 vibrating motors, with total power less than 4kw. And the feeding for shale shaker is easy cause the mud flows directly from drilling. There is even no need for an extra pump.

2. Mud tanks are another main component for this system. They are used to receive the clean mud for next cycling. By using the jet mud mixer along with the tanks, the new chemicals can be added into the mud system.
It is clear that there are no desander or desilter cones in this system, for one thing, comparing with shale shakers, the desanding or desilter cyclones are less efficient. For the other, both desander and desilter cones need large power centrifugal pumps for feeding.

In this case, the client can collect the drilling solids waste to a vertical cuttings dryer or decanter centrifuge for drying before discharge. And also the drilling fluids can be retreated by decanter centrifuge when there are fine particles in the fluids after several cycles.

For more information, welcome to contact GN directly.

How to Choose a Suitable Mud Tank System

Unless the old type of crude oil explorations as shown in the movie <There Will Be Blood>, in modern times, the drillings are much gentler and it takes care of environment very well. And this can attribute to the employment of solids control system. The solids control system can help to remove the solids particles generated from drilling and also return the expensive drilling fluids back to the drilling procedure

For confirming the specifications of a mud tank system, here are several steps:

1st, to confirm the volume of mud tanks, there are several points to be taken into consideration:
1.1 the drilling structure, the drilling mud replenishment when tool is lifted or the overflow when the tool is lowered during drilling
1.2 the mud pump’s rated displacement volume.
1.3 the drilling speed of the project, especially the drilling speed of large-diameter topsoil;
1.4 the well bore’s complexity should be taken into consideration, for example, whether there is lost circulation and blowout risk, or whether it is necessary to reserve a variety of mud;
1.5 the type of drilling mud used and speed of drilling mud preparation.

2nd， How to define the minimum drilling mud volume used for oil and gas drilling.

2.1 international API method 1: well bore volume with 100 barrels added. One barrel in the US system is about 158.97 liters in the metric system, and 100 barrels is about 16 cubic meters.
2.2 international API method 2: Daily footage (well barrel volume) ‘s five or 6 times. The coefficient is usually 5.5.
2.3 international API method 3: maximum circulating capacity of mud pump multiplied by 0.618. The unit of maximum circulating capacity of mud pump is m3 / min. this calculation method mainly considers that bubbles in drilling fluid can fully overflow the liquid level, and the calculated result is the liquid level area (unit: m2).
2.4 domestic method 1 in China : well barrel volume * 1.5 ~ 2.0. with common coefficient as 1.75.
2.5 domestic method 2 in China: nominal drilling depth of drilling rig ÷ (20 ~ 22) * 130%. The common coefficient is 21.

Hope the knowledge we shared is useful for your work.