After weeks hard working together with Australia engineering team, GN Solids Control finished the design and fabrication of a set of special drilling mud treatment system to a well-known drilling company in Papua New Guinea. The most special point of the drilling mud solid control system is that the entire mud system will be chartered to Papua New Guinea by airplane, including tanks, all separation equipment, and mud gas separator package.

As the oil field is located at very remote areas, there are no normal roads leading to the oilfield. As a full package mud treatment system composed of full line drilling mud solid control equipment, and mud tanks, and all the items must be shipped by air plane, the workload and difficulty of work can be imagined.

The mud system is composed of 6 mud tanks for sufficient tank volume and to support bigger handling capacity.
In the mud recovery system, two drilling fluid shale shakers and one mud cleaner are equipped for the separation of coarse cuttings and sand. After three-stage separation, most of the harmful solids will be removed, so that the drilling mud can be reused. According to the different function and tank volume, totally 18 mud agitators were installed on 6 tanks. The function of the centrifugal pumps is to transfer the mud in the system from a mud chamber to a subsequent purification equipment, such as to desiander and desilter separators.

In order to ensure the aggravation of mud and the need of slurry blending, the system adopts the design of double jet mud mixer: two mixing pumps are connected in parallel. In condition that any mixed pump is overhauled, the other one can still work. The system is also equipped with a mud gas separator, which can separate and release the combustible gas invading the drilling mud to avoid blowout.

Papua New Guinea is one of the countries with the most stringent manufacturing and assembly standards for solid control systems in the world. In the process of designing and manufacturing the system, GN Solids Control faced with two main challenges: one is the electrical cables. During the work, all operating procedures need to be completed in accordance with Papua New Guinea standards. As GN Solids Control completed some projects in the area to accumulating a lot of experience, this work can be carried out smoothly. Another challenge is that each module needs to be controlled within a strict weight range to ensure the safety of helicopter hoisting operations, which requires all items design must calculate the weight very carefully to avoid overweight.