Drilling waste vertical cuttings dryer is widely used to treat oil based mud and oil based mud cuttings. It can further recovery useful drilling fluids from the drilling waste cuttings, and reduce the oil content on the cuttings.
Function of drilling waste vertical cuttings dryer for oil based mud and oil based cuttings
Oil on cuttings (OOC) is a basic parameter to identify the performance of a Vertical cuttings dryer. Before enter into vertical cuttings dryer, the oil on cuttings (OOC) is normally around 15% ~ 25%. After treatment of Vertical cuttings dryer, the OOC should be reduced to 3% ~ 5%. It is the degree accepted by most of the counties. The cuttings with 3% ~ 5% OOC discharged from VG dryer can be buried directly.

drilling waste cuttings dryer

In some counties with higher standard, the cuttings can be moved to thermal desorption unit (TDU) for further treatment to reduce OOC to 0.5%.
The recovered mud from Vertical cuttings dryer can be reused for drilling. But as the mud is very heavy, Normally, high speed drilling waste decanter centrifuge will be used after VG dryer to reduce the mud weight. After VG dryer and high speed centrifuge treatment, the mud should be qualified for drilling. As there is no environment hazardous materials generated from the drilling rig site after all these treatment, so VG dryer and high speed centrifuge are popular and welcomed by rig site as Zero discharge system.
Many clients may wonder: If the thermal distortion unit (TDU) can reduce oil on cuttings to as low as 0.5%, why don’t the rig site use TDU to treat oil based mud and cuttings directly. The answer is that, TDU is a high energy consumption equipment. And the capacity is very small, the normal capacity of 1 set TDU is 1 ton per hour, and max. 2 tons per hour. And it is cost higher. But VG dryer can treat around 30 tons per hours. Equip VG dryer before TDU can increase treating capacity of the total system.