Drilling Waste Treatment disposal

Drill cuttings are one of the inevitable wastes generated from the drilling process of oil exploration activities. Drill cuttings are heterogeneous wastes that are composed of significant percentages of hydrocarbons, water, heavy metals, and water-soluble salts such as chlorides and sulphates. The cuttings are produced when the drilling activity commences with continuously pumping down a fluid known as ‘drilling mud’ into the drill pipe. Not only does the drilling mud provide the necessary lubrication and hydrostatic head that prevents the collapse of the pipe walls, but it also transports the rock debris (i.e. drill cuttings) to the surface. On return to the drilling facility, the mixture of cuttings and mud are processed in a circulation system in order to clean the cuttings and recover as much of the mud as possible. The recycled drilling mud is reused again in the drilling, while the drill cuttings are discharged at the cutting Skips to transfer to the Treatment Sites which treat the cuttings used one of the following Methods:-

• Incineration

• Rotary Kilns

• Solidification (Stabilization) 

• Thermal Desorption

Effects of Discharges of Drill Cuttings

The impact of agricultural and industrial development on the health of the people in countries, both the direct effects of environmental agents and the indirect effects of concomitant migration, crowding, and poverty, have been difficult to accurately and objectively measure. Poor socioeconomic conditions, inadequate water and sanitation quality, limited educational achievement, and lack of adequate public health infrastructure are common in such regions, and their detrimental effects on health are difficult to distinguish and frequently confound public health investigations of the impact of industrialization and development.

All stages of oil management beginning from exploration and production and ending with the use of petroleum products are accompanied by strong environmental pollution. Note that a human receives the highest concentration of a pollutant, since he occurs on the last trophic level of the ecology pyramid of biomass and consumes matter and energy from all other levels. That is, exerting the techno genic impact on the environment, a human thereby turns out to harbor pollutants at their highest level and encounters the boomerang effect, which is what the law of pollution distribution in the life zone is frequently and quite justly called Chemical pollution due to atmospheric emissions of petroleum hydrocarbons and their transformation products poses the greatest threat to the environment.

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Waste Management of Drilling Cuttings Problem

Sustainable development of petroleum resources requires appropriate management of all waste streams generated over the entire life cycle of a development beginning with initial planning of projects and operations right through to decommissioning and site restoration. Quality waste management approach is crucial to achieve this goal. The principle aim of waste management is to ensure that waste does not contaminate the environment at such a rate or in such a form or quantity as to overload natural assimilative processes and cause pollution. Eliminating or minimizing waste generation is crucial, not only to reduce environmental liabilities but also operational cost usually we used Hi G or Vertical Dryer. Many disposal practices of the past are being questioned now. The cost of cleaning up many past hazardous waste sites will be high and a substantial part of these clean-up costs will be charged to industry under the polluter pay principle. As inadequate waste handling eventually leads to environmental damage and financial liabilities, systematic waste management through integrated environmental economics became a preferred approach in the upstream phase of the petroleum industry.

The Waste Management Solution is to help manage solids control, wastes, and liability issues from a drilling projective. Petroleum Exploration and Production Companies established a Rig Waste Reduction Pilot plan to identify potential waste reduction strategies. Their preferential hierarchy that they developed is: reduce, reuse, recycle, recover and dispose.

  The major of the total waste stream was found to be drilling discharges and non-hazardous oilfield waste. Mud use was reduced by 20% and mud component packaging was reduced by 90% through a combination of solids control efficiency, cuttings dryer technology and bulk mixing equipment. In addition, Shell implemented a sorting, compaction and recycling process for solid waste (consumables and trash) to reduce landfill disposal operations.

It should be recommended the following:

• OBM Drill cuttings must be dryered using Hi G or Vertical Dryer, to bring down the contaminants level to acceptable level before its transfer to treat @ treatment Sites and disposal to reduce the Treatment & Transportation cost.

• Petroleum resources in Egypt may redouble effort to enforce the ban on the use of the OBM by crude-oil producing companies operating in the country.

• The choice of Treatment Mythology phase is one of responsibility of Petroleum companies. 

• The findings may be adopted by the concerned companies in treating the drill cuttings to apply the thermal separation phase to reuse the oil again in OBM as oil base and as fuel.