If drilling waste disposal cost is not an issue, then all the drilling waste generated can be disposal, if necessary, it can be shipped to other facility for treatment. Actually if some of the material can be recycled and reused, the solution is much more economic, that is why most contractor will select to treat the drilling waste and recycle to reduce the treatment cost and also disposal cost. To treat the drilling waste, firstly we need to know the nature of drilling waste. The drilling waste contains a large amount of base fluid, whether that fluid is diesel oil, mineral oil, olefin, ester, or water. For example, for the offshore drilling waste, diesel oil is an obvious contaminant, diesel oil-based drilling fluids and drilling waste will not be discharged into the sea. The drilling waste can be treated onsite or collected and shipped to other facility for treatment.
When oil based drilling waste is treated onsite, the vertical cuttings dryer system will be installed at the rig site. There are 2 ways to collect the drilling waste from solids control equipments, one way is to collect the drilling cuttings from primary shale shaker by screw conveyor, and transfer to vertical cuttings dryer, another way is to storage the drilling waste in a waste pit and use the excavator to pick up the waste from waste pit to drilling waste management system.
If water based drilling waste is treatment onsite, the high G drying shaker with VFD decanter centrifuge will be installed, the high G drying shaker is to separate the coarse solids and reduce the solids content, the decanter centrifuge will separate the solids particles cut point up to 2 microns. The discharged fluids can be recycled, if it is required to be disposal, proper chemicals will be added.