Mud cleaner
Encyclopedia
A mud cleaner is a combination of desanders and/or desilters to remove drilled solids from mud.

History

Although US Patent No.3,766,997 covering Mud Cleaner was issued on October 23, 1973 granted to J.K. Heilhecker and L.H. Robinson and assigned to Exxon Production Research Company, it was found invalid and efforts for re-issue was unsuccessful because of the existence of prior art
Prior art
Prior art , in most systems of patent law, constitutes all information that has been made available to the public in any form before a given date that might be relevant to a patent's claims of originality...

 filed at the British Patent Office by a German Inventor in the late 1800s.

Nowadays, mud cleaner used in oilfield means the equipment processing drilling mud. It is combined with desander cone and desilter cone as well as bottom shaker. It is called 2nd and 3rd phase solids control equipments

Description

A mud cleaner is a combination of desander
Desander
Desanders and desilters are drilling rig equipment with a set of hydrocyclones that separates sand and silt from the drilling fluid. Desander is installed after shakers and degasser but before desilter. Desander removes those abrassive solids from the drilling mud which cannot be removed by shakers...

s and/or desilters mounted over a shaker with a fine mesh screen. A mud is fed to the inlet of the hydrocyclone (desander and/or desilter) to separate particles and the underflow passes to the fine screen mesh where in particles larger than barite
Barite
Baryte, or barite, is a mineral consisting of barium sulfate. The baryte group consists of baryte, celestine, anglesite and anhydrite. Baryte itself is generally white or colorless, and is the main source of barium...

 are discarded and thrown away. In most drilling operations, a mud cleaner is installed in its mud systems
Mud systems
Effective solids control can be attributed to the overall performance of all the components of the mud systems. Conditioning the drilling fluid with the goal of dramatically lowering maintenance cost, avoiding excessive chemical treatment and maintaining mud systems volume will decrease the chance...

. It is usually located in a mud tank in the same location as with the desilters.

Process Flow

The weighted mud flows to the inlet head section of the desander and/or desilter entering the hydrocyclones for separation of particles. Mud leaving the underflow is further screened with fine mesh to separate larger particles allowing only barite size particles to pass through the screen returning and recovering then the clean mud.

Purpose

The purpose of the mud cleaner is to remove drilled solids larger than barite. Solids larger than 74-105 micrometres can be removed by the mud cleaner before the viscosity builds up.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK