GN Solids Control manufactures 60 sets to 100 sets cuttings dryers every year. It can be used to separate OBM or WBM. Usually, in order to save cost the Hi-G shaker will be a replacement solution to separate the WBM, while the cuttings dryer can be used to treat OBM.
For the cuttings that separated by shale shaker, mud cleaner, it contains around 20% oil. Then these cuttings will be feed into the cuttings dryer. If we use GN High G Drying Shaker, normally we can get the oil on the cuttings around 10-12%. But if we use GN cuttings dryer, we can get the oil on the cuttings to be 3-5%. For every 100 Tons drilling cuttings, without using TDU to heat the drilling cuttings, our clients can recycle additional 7 Tons oil.
The treating capacity of GN vertical cuttings dryer is around 30~40 Tons/H. Solids that larger than 250 microns will be separated out, while the smaller size solids will be left in the drilling fluids.
The wet material enter the TDU will reduce the capacity dramatically as we know. The solids come out from GN cuttings dryer and GN Hi-G shaker can be send to TDU for further separation, but due to the oil in the cuttings is not the same ( 3-5% OOC cuttings after treated by GN cuttings dryer and 10-12% OOC cuttings after treated by GN Hi-G Shaker), the difference is pretty obvious. By using the cuttings dryer, it will increase capacity of the TDU, and the electricity cost will be saved.
The wet material will also increase the load of the other unit of TDU system. Like the Vapor Recovery Unit, Cooling Tower Skid, Oil water separator etc. As we know, the capacity for TDU is very small if the material especially when the materials are very wet.
Generally Speaking, considering the TDU don’t have a large treating capacity, so the cuttings can be treated by one GN cuttings dryer, one GN Hi-G shaker. Sometimes, you also need one GN decanter centrifuge for much finer solids separation.
