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SC DRILLTECH · KNOWLEDGE LIBRARY

55 articles from the field.

Solids control, drilling fluids and waste management — the working knowledge behind the train, written from 26+ years on the rig.

Solids Control 1

Removal efficiency (η)
Drilled-solids removal efficiency — written η (eta) — is the single most useful number in solid…
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Equipment 7

Hydrocyclone feed head
Hydrocyclones — desanders and desilters — are the only major piece of solids-control equipment …
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The pit train in order
You can buy the best shakers, the sharpest cones and the biggest centrifuge on the market and s…
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Shaker motion and G-force
Two shakers can carry identical API RP 13C screens and perform completely differently — because…
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Desanders and desilters
Desanders and desilters are the same machine at two sizes. Both are banks of hydrocyclones — co…
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The degasser
Of all the equipment in the pit room, the degasser is the one most likely to be misunderstood a…
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Tanks, agitation and turnover
Spend on the best shakers, cones and centrifuge on the market and you can still run a poor soli…
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The mud cleaner
On a weighted mud, a bank of desilters becomes a liability: barite is ground to pass 200 mesh (…
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Method 10

Reading a shaker
Pick a shaker screen by “mesh” alone and you are guessing. Mesh count never described what a sc…
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The sand content test
The sand content test is the cheapest, fastest measurement in the entire mud-check kit — a glas…
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The daily solids-control report
Most solids-control losses are invisible not because they are hard to see, but because no one i…
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Microns, mesh and cut points
Strip solids control down to one sentence and it is this: sorting particles by size, and removi…
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Retention on cuttings (ROC)
Retention on cuttings (ROC) is the mass of fluid clinging to discharged solids after the separa…
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The solids-control rig audit
A solids-control audit is a systematic inspection of the entire surface separation train — equi…
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The methylene blue test
What the MBT tells the solids engineer — how much of your solids load is reactive clay versus inert grind, and what to do…
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The retort test
The most honest instrument on the mud bench — oil, water and solids, and how to split solids into LGS versus barite…
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The fluid-loss test
API and HPHT filtration, what filtrate and cake really tell you, and why your drilled-solids load decides the cake…
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The electrical stability test
How tough your invert emulsion is — the fast ES read, and why water-wet solids quietly drag the number down…
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Centrifuge 7

High-speed dewatering vs barite recovery
How a decanter centrifuge works
Bowl, scroll, pool and a 2–5 micron cut — the working principle and its two opposite jobs…
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Pool depth & differential speed
The two levers — deep pool for the cut, shallow for volume; low differential for dry cake…
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Centrifuge feed rate & the cut
Feed rate is retention time — your cut-point dial from outside the bowl, balanced against torque…
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Dual-centrifuge setups
Slow then fast — middle-speed keeps the barite, high-speed dumps the fines, in series…
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A decanting centrifuge is the most flexible machine on the solids-control train — and the most …
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Why centrifuges fail
The decanting centrifuge is the most capable machine on the solids-control train and the one mo…
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Centrifuge capacity and run hours
A decanting centrifuge that sits idle while dilution climbs is one of the most common and least…
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Drilling Fluids 5

Low-gravity solids, the retort, and the dilution they force
Every problem solids control exists to solve comes down to one quantity: low-gravity solids (LG…
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Marsh funnel viscosity
The Marsh funnel is the most-used and most-misunderstood instrument on the rig. It is quick, ru…
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Mud weight, barite and sag
Solids control spends most of its attention on the solids it wants out — but it has an equally …
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Plastic viscosity, yield point and what they tell the solids engineer
To diagnose what solids are doing to the mud, you need two numbers from a rotational viscometer…
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Non-aqueous drilling fluids
Non-aqueous drilling fluids (NADF) — OBM and SBM — change the solids-control job in fundamental…
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Completion Filtration 4

Brine clarity & NTU
What “clean” completion brine actually means — turbidity targets, API RP 13J, and why particle size matters as much as NTU…
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The filter press (DE)
Diatomaceous-earth filtration for bulk solids — precoat, body feed, and where the press sits in the brine train…
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Cartridge & bag filtration units
The final polish to NTU spec — micron ratings, nominal vs absolute, Beta-rating and coarse-to-fine staging…
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Brine filtration troubleshooting
Hitting NTU without killing throughput — blinding, breakthrough, DE release and the staging that fixes them…
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Regional / MENA 4

Drilling waste disposal: GCC & MENA
Where Gulf drilling waste goes — CRI, thermal, landfarming, evaporation, and the move to zero discharge…
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Onshore desert operations
Evaporation pits, landfarming, CRI and thermal — running desert waste so the climate works for you…
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Cuttings disposal routes
Injection, thermal and land — the real routes for drill cuttings and how to choose between them…
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Oil on cuttings & discharge limits
The OSPAR 1% limit, EPA no-free-oil rule and GCC zero-discharge — the number that decides where waste goes…
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DWM 6

Five drilling-waste-management mistakes that quietly cost you money
Drilling waste management is where solids control meets the environment — and the budget. The h…
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Cuttings dryers
On an oil- or synthetic-based-mud well, the cuttings dryer is usually the single biggest lever …
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Dewatering chemistry
A dewatering unit is only as good as the chemistry feeding it. The centrifuge, the filter press…
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Closed-loop and zero-discharge
A closed-loop system removes the one thing solids control has always quietly leaned on: the res…
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Cuttings re-injection (CRI)
Cuttings re-injection (CRI) takes drilling waste, converts it into a pumpable slurry, and injec…
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Thermal desorption units (TDU)
The vertical cuttings dryer drives OOC to roughly 3–5%. For many regulatory environments that i…
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Solids Control Performance 4

Solids control performance KPIs
The six numbers that decide it — SRE, LGS, dilution ratio, ROC, screen life and cost per foot…
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Solids loading & ROP
The feedback loop — drilled solids you don’t remove slow the bit, and the slow bit makes more solids…
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The cut-point cascade
Shaker to centrifuge — each stage catches a finer band, and a dropped band is where LGS climbs…
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Screen conductance & utilization
Cut point vs conductance, NBA and utilization — the API RP 13C numbers that set the shaker’s ceiling…
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Performance 4

Efficiency that keeps the bit turning
Solids control is often filed under “cost centre” — equipment you run because you have to. That…
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Differential sticking
Differential sticking is the most expensive single failure mode in drilling — and one of the mo…
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Solids control on HPHT wells
HPHT drilling — BHT above 150 °C and/or pore pressures exceeding 10,000 psi — is where the soli…
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ECD management
Equivalent circulating density (ECD) is the effective mud weight the formation sees while the p…
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Economics 1

Cutting dilution cost
Most solids-control losses are invisible because the system never stops running. Nothing trips,…
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Compliance 1

Drilling-waste environmental compliance
Environmental compliance used to be paperwork the HSE department handled after the well was dri…
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History 1

The history of solids control
Most people assume solids control started on a drilling rig. It didn’t. The equipment standing …
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