Environmental control of drilling fluids and produced water

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-1-2008

Abstract

This section presents technology for environmental control of waste generation from the drilling process. Spent drilling fluid is the primary waste stream from the process. Thus, by the preventive nature of ECT, discussed in Chapter 2, new waste reduction components have been built into the mud engineering technology. A steady increase of the mud system volume, as shown in Chapter 2, is inherent in the drilling process and results from both disintegration of cuttings during their transport to the surface and limited efficiency of cuttings removal by the solids-control separators. For water-based muds, this mechanism can be controlled by adding a second (dewatering) loop to the mud processing system so that the mud's water phase can be recycled and the volume of drilling waste minimized. Ultimately, disposal of this waste depends upon the toxicity of mud systems used to drill the well. Therefore, the properties of mud systems that are directly related to pollution are dispersibility, dewaterability, and toxicity. In a 'clean' drilling process these properties must be controlled. Also, such a process requires improvements in mud solidsremoval efficiency. © 2008 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

Publication Source (Journal or Book title)

Environmental Technology in the Oil Industry

First Page

77

Last Page

121

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS