Fundamentals of Microwave Heating and Drying of Drilled Cuttings

Abstract

Drilled cuttings contaminated by non aqueous drilling fluids are the major waste from oil well drilling activities. More restrictive environmental legislation has led to the search for alternative technologies to promote cuttings decontamination according to the law. The mixture of cuttings and fluid returning from the well goes through a set of separation equipments, called solids control systems, in order to recover the drilling fluid for reuse. The cuttings from the solids control system must be decontaminated before they can be discharged into the sea. Microwave heating has been studied over the past few years as an alternative to promote the decontamination of this waste and has been shown to be a promising technology. This work aimed to investigate fundamental aspects of microwave heating and drying of drilled cuttings. The heating curve of two different drilling fluids commonly employed in well-drilling operations was obtained. The kinetics of drying of cuttings contaminated with these drilling fluids was also investigated. It was evaluated the behavior of organic phase and water removal in the microwave drying process.

Conventional and microwave drying of hydrocarbon cutting sludge

“…Drying processes are available technologies in order to reduce the damage caused by waste water treatment sludge and to reduce domestic wastewater treatment sludge weight . The microwave heating is a cost‐effective and time‐efficient technology for the remediation of soil contaminated with volatile organic compounds and petroleum hydrocarbons .…”

Eco-friendly synthesis of carbon nanotubes and their cancer theranostic applications

“…36,37,53 MW-assisted synthesis techniques exhibit faster heating rates as the material couple strongly with the electromagnetic energy under MW irradiation. 37,54,55 The fast heating rate under MW irradiation stimulates and enhances the thermal decomposition reactions. 56 Dissimilar to the conventional heating, this can offer the selective heating due to the transformation of energy at a molecular scale.…”

“…The production of hot spots has considerable influences on the composition and distribution of final products. 37,54,55 After forming CNTs structures, they need to be purified and functionalized for further applications; MW-assisted protocols are favorable in view of rapid coupling of carbonaceous materials with MWs. The conventional techniques applied for the purification of CNTs include thermal, chemical, and sonication treatments.…”

“…The production of hot spots has considerable influences on the composition and distribution of final products. 37,54,55…”

Drying of Drill Cuttings: Emphasis on Energy Consumption and Thermal Analysis

“…In microwave drying systems, mass and treatment time directly relate to specific energy [2]. In previous literature, it was emphasized that microwave drying was a cost-effective and time-efficient system for the management of waste that was contaminated with petroleum hydrocarbons [2,6,[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. It also has several advantages with respect to the environment such as being a cleaner energy source, and being more energy-saving [6,[21][22][23][24].…”