This chapter continues with last one, as the second part working description of separation plant for tunneling project. For the first chapter, you can view: http://oilfield.gnsolidscontrol.com/separation-plant-for-tunneling-project/
Historically, Separation plants have been the bottleneck in many tunneling projects, resulting in lost time and money to the contractor. Before the start of the project, It is very important to plan ahead to have the properly sized and correct equipment in working place. Note: poor planning results in poor performance and money lost.
GN Solids can offer customized mud system matching with your TBM. Drilling mud treating capacity is from 200gpm to 1000gpm respectively. Please contact GN Solids to get proper solution for your tunneling project.
For world well known directional drill rig, there are Ditch Witch, American Augers, Vermeer. The three brands occupy most part of international market. For small drill, no need mud system. But for drill rig above 150gpm, a small mud recycling system can help you work more efficiency and environment friendly. For small mud system, GN Solids have 150gpm, 200gpm,250gpm, 300gpm for option. They can also customize as per the customer request.
Coalbed methane (CBM) reserves are a relatively untapped energy source with huge potential. It has become an important source of energy in all over the world, like Canada, United States, Australia, China, etc. The exploration of CBM is similar to geothermal well drilling. They mainly need rig, mud system, mud pump, and some other accessory equipment.
Decanter centrifuge is core equipment both for solid control system and waste management system. With constant improvement of the requirements from customers, many customers attach more importance on the bowl diameter and treating capacity. In China up to now, only GN can manufacture big bowl , big volume decanter centrifuge, with bowl diameter 22inch and treating capacity Max.500GPM.
Among ME countries, Iran market is a good market for oil drilling. Many equipment suppliers and drilling contractors have been working hard on the market for many years. Up to now, in the field of solid control equipment and service, the fact is that some U.S. brands control the most part of the market. And it is not easy for China brand to come, even with high quality and inexpensive equipment. We may talk about decanter centrifuge as one aspect. In Iran, the most popular model of decanter centrifuge is Swaco CD518HV and GNLW363VFD. They are both high speed centrifuge model.
Why we should have drill slurry storaged? Mainly it is because of the reasons below:
(1) Requirement for the carriage and storage of mud on mobile drilling units has increased over the years, it is not convenient to process the drilling mud at the platform, you have to collect the used drill slurry and carry it to drilling fluids plant for process, then recycle the clean drill slurry and disposal the useless cuttings, so that it will not influence the environment.
Drill Slurry Storage
(2) Clean drill slurry should be storaged for use, for drilling , for mixing , for lubricate the drill bit.
(3) Useless drill cuttings should be collected and storage, then carried to drilling waste management system for process.
GN solids control manufacture drill slurry storage tank for various application, with necessary mud agitators, mud gun, centrifugal pump and mixing hopper. We can produce mud storage tank together with solids control system or separately. Compared with shaker tank and intermediate tank, the pipeline of storage tank is much simple, if required by the clients, we will divide it into several compartment by clapboard. Sometimes mud ditch is installed on each compartment. Handrails, stairs, cleaning gate, valves are included, but walkways are not included. There is flexible hose connected 2 tanks.
See the photo on the right, it is a mud circulation system with mud gas separator, in oil drilling solids control system, the 1st phase cleaning equipments of mud circulation system is shale shaker, which is fed the mud from high pressure manifold, the mud gas separator is fed mud from the chock manifold. When much of harmful gas is found during drilling, they close the valve to stop feeding the shale shaker, and open the valve to feed to mud gas separator, and use hundreds of exhaust pipe to transfer the harmful gas from mud gas separator to a place far from well head, and use flare ignition device to burn it. Mud gas separator is not a part of solids control system, GN can manufacture both of them, so we put them together for your convenience.
Mud circulation system with mud gas separator
Mud circulation system is also called mud cleaning system, mud recycling system, solids control system, Usually if a mud circulation system with mud gas separator, it is usually oil & gas drilling or geothermal, it can not be HDD or water well drilling. Mud gas separator is horizontally installed on the skid with the chock manifold on it together, it is easy for transportation.
HDD means horizontal directional drilling or Directional boring, is a steerable trenchless method of installing underground pipes, conduits and cables in a shallow arc along a prescribed bore path by using a surface-launched drilling rig, with minimal impact on the surrounding area.
HDD fluids system
Drilling fluids have several important functions. They cool and lubricate the drill bit, stem and other down hole tools. The fluid also assists in sealing the sides of the bore, therefore stabilizing the borehole. Finally, drilling fluids are designed to carry the cuttings out of the hole.
The most widely used drilling fluids for HDD applications are bentonite, even if they are not so expensive compared with oilfield drilling fluids, but it is still a pollution for the environment, especially usually they dig a mud pit for HDD and pump the drilling fluids from the mud pit to shale shaker. After the directional boring, how to treat the used drilling mud become a problem.
Mud agitator is mainly composed of electric motor, gear box and impeller shaft assy, for shaft- connection type mud agitator, it also have coupler. Elastic coupling connect electric motor input shaft and agitator gear box input shaft. Impeller shaft and agitator gear box output shaft are connected by rigid coupling.
agitator gear box
GN agitator gear box is worm gear reducer, which is combined with explosion-proof motor, enable stable performance in wild severe environment.
Rotation of the drive motor is transferred to the impeller shaft through the directly coupled gear drive. The drive is a reduction agitator gear box and is factory assembled to the drive motor. The drive is sized to apply the maximum torque required to produce the design impeller rotation speed of 60 rpm under 50hz, and 72 rpm under 60hz.
The mud agitator stirs a mud slurry to maintain suspension of solids. The agitator is mounted on top of the mud tank and has one or two impeller(s) immersed in the mud slurry. The impeller shaft is directly coupled to an electric drive motor that is available in several horsepower ratings from 7.5 to 25.