Drilling Waste Management in

Onshore Environmental Sensitive Areas

Authors:
Mojtaba Kalhor Mohammadi, Curtin University of Technology, Western Australia

Co-authors:
A. Professor J orge Sampaio, Curtin University of Technology, Western Australia
Dr. Koorosh Tahmasbi, Petroleum University of Technology, Iran
Dr. Frank Almassi, Baker Hughes Drilling Fluids, Perth, Australia

Abstracts
Drilling operations have always been considered by environmental agencies because of
generating large volumes of wastes during operation include drilling fluid, cuttings, rig
wash water, etc. Discharge of these wastes in the environment is the main concern and
requires waste management plan before starting the project in the drilling site.
Many practices and treatment have been introduced in the drilling site to treat and
manage of the drilling waste but there are still some issues about environmental friendly,
operational and cost effective practices in drilling operation.
This paper describes the dewatering process as a drilling waste management practices in
a drilling project in Western Australia. The main significant objective of this project is to
remain the operator in compliance with current regulations and the cost of waste
management practice. Also preplanning laboratory test has optimized chemical
consumption and helped to find out the dewatering efficiency in waste treatment.
1 Introduction
Environmental legislation in the exploration and production of oil and gas requires plans
for managing of wastes during operations by operators, service companies and
contractors. As the view of the waste generation, environmental agencies consider the
drilling as one of the important operation in exploration and production. During the
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drilling operations large volumes of wastes is generated including drilling fluid, cuttings,
rig wash water, etc. Discharge of these wastes in environment is the main concern
because of their effects on the environment and there are some policies and regulations
on discharge of wastes by the environmental organizations and governments.
Environmental sensitive areas including islands, lakes, all areas surrounding the river and
life of animals and vegetations are considered by the environmental agencies.
Traditionally, drilling wastes were discharged in ocean or onsite location without any
concern about future environment problems.
Nowadays, preserving these environmental area considered as the global awareness has
been started from 1990s and the liability of the future environmental problem will be
remained by the initial waste producer in the site. There were two significant aspects in
managing of the drilling waste in onshore environmental sensitive areas; the first one is to
recognize harmful wastes, volume of wastes and limitation of the discharge. The second
one is to select an efficient, operational and economical option for waste management.
2 Drilling Waste Management
As a definition, Drilling Waste Management is a management system for selecting
optimal strategies, determining successful practices and technologies for treating the
drilling waste in a given geographical or environmental setting. Geographical locations
and environmental requirements play an important role to find proper management
systems in drilling sites.
Most of operators plan treatments and practices for waste management according to
drilling locations and limitations. Usually, limitations dictate by the environmental
organizations and governments. But an efficient drilling waste management system
follows goals including minimization of the drilling waste, reusing/recycling and efficient
disposal plan. To approach these goals, many practices introduce to drilling industry.
Traditionally, most of them were increased the well cost but during the last 10 years,
many cost effective options have been introduced to onshore and offshore drilling
industries.

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3 Case Study
The case study herein shows the drilling waste management practices in an onshore
environmental sensitive in Western Australia. Zero discharge practice in drilling
operation is one of the environmental requirements in WA. All operators must use waste
management plan during the drilling operation to manage drilling wastes including; drill
cutting, drilling fluids and waste water.
As the initial waste management plan, the drilling fluid was designed as water based mud
to reduce the environmental impact by providing technical requirements during drilling
operation. Collection and treatment of the generated waste water from tanks washing and
rig washing are the other waste management plan before final discharge in this project.
The main issue in this project was the liquid waste including remained drilling fluids after
operation for each section of the drilling. Collection of these wastes in reserve tanks and
hauling of them to shore was not the acceptable solution as there is still some issue about
spillage or leakage during hauling and shipping. On the other hand, volume of the liquid
waste, distance from disposal facility and cost of the shipping associated with
environmental concern. All of these reasons caused to plan onsite treatment on the
drilling waste before final discharge of wastes.
4 Theory
Theory of the dewatering process is based on pH controlling of the drilling fluid wastes
and surface charge of fines and ultra fines. In the pH range of the drilling fluids that is
typically being between 7 to 11, ultra fine particles in the drilling fluids tend to be
charged negatively. These negative charges repel the particles and prevent from clumping
of the particles. This causes difficulty in removing the ultra fine particles even with a
high-speed centrifuge with 2000 g force. To solve this problem, it is necessary to treat the
drilling fluids or waste fluids chemically to agglomerate the solids to make them large
enough to be removed by a high-speed centrifuge. The process of agglomeration to create
large, dense clusters requires two steps:
1. Destabilize the submicron particles so they no longer repel each other. This is easily
achieved by lowering the pH from its original pH to approximately 5.5.
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2. Flocculate, bundle, or wrap together to create large dense clusters.
These two steps can be accomplished by sequentially adding three chemicals; or
sometimes only one or two chemical additives can accomplish all three steps. Today,
ranges of polymers produce by companies with different molecular weight of cationic
coagulants, non-ionic, anionic and cationic flocculants.



Figure 1- Schematic procedure of dewatering

4.1 Technical Consideration
As the technical consideration, dewatering process requires laboratory procedures such as
jar test to select the proper coagulants and flocculants. But there is a problem in finding
the optimum dosage/concentration of chemicals in jar test. Optimization of chemical
concentration is necessary in the dewatering process. Otherwise, it increases the cost of
chemical consumption in the field. To approaching this goal, series of the laboratory tests
have been done to select the proper chemicals and the proper dosages of them by
centrifuge simulation as the additional procedure to common jar test. This has helped to
simulate the separation process as the field condition to obtain the optimum chemical
dosage in the dewatering process and also find out the dewatering efficiency in reducing
the waste volume and monitoring the quality of the produced water in the dewatering
process.
Bridging Flocculation
Polymer chains can
"bridge" particles to
create larger masses that
settle out
Charge Neutralization
Like charged particles
repel removal of charge
can enable particles to
approach close enough
to coagulate
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5 Results
Initially, pH of the drilling fluid waste reduced to neutralized point with different
percentage of wastes with water. Monitoring of pH has shown that 50% dilution of the
waste with water has reduced the concentration of acid to 50% in comparison with the
25% water dilution (Figure 2). Mixing the waste with water helps to destroy the balance
of the chemicals in the drilling fluids especially the portion of the polymers in it. Also, it
is cost effective to reduce the consumed volume of the acid by adding water.
In the next step, different volumes of the flocculants have been added to compare the
settlement of the solids during the time. This has helped to find the proper flocculants for
dewatering. (Figure3). The initial concentration of the flocculant obtains by comparing
the solid settlements within the first minutes after adding the flocculant in figure 3. As
figure 3 has showed after a certain concentration, solids precipitation has remained
constant as concentration graphs overlap on each other but this is not the optimum
concentration. Until this step it is possible to introduce the proper flocculant with the
initial concentration.
5
5.5
6
6.5
7
7.5
8
8.5
9
9.5
10
10.5
11
11.5
12
0 5000 10000 15000 20000 25000 30000 35000
Concent r at ion of Acid (ppm)

p
H

No Dilution, Real
Waste
25% Dilution of
water
50% Dilution of
water

Figure 2-pH control of the drilling fluids waste
Dilution of the waste with water is effective on reducing the concentration of pH control chemicals and
helps to better mixing of the acid with waste in a lower time as desired in the dewatering process. 50%
dilution of water reduces the required acid to 14000 ppm from the initial value (29000 ppm) at the
neutralized point.
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0
2
4
6
8
10
12
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32
Time,Min
S
o
l
i
d
s

P
r
e
c
i
p
i
t
a
t
i
o
n

(
%
)
40ppm 80ppm 120ppm 160ppm 200ppm

Figure 3-Solid precipitation with different concentration of the flocculant
In the dewatering process, flocculation must be considered within the first minutes after adding flocculant.
As the figure shows, solids precipitation increases as the concentration of the polymer increases until 160
ppm. More than 160 ppm overdosing occurs as there is no increase in the solid precipitation in the first
minutes.
To find the optimum concentration of the acid to reduce pH, solid separation versus
different concentration of the acid has been compared. According to the figure 4, after a
certain concentration, the solid separation has remained constant as there is not much
increase in the solid percentage. This concentration is the optimum value for the pH
reduction. To find the optimum concentration of flocculants, the same procedure has been
done with adding different concentration of the flocculant and centrifuging for one
minute. Comparing results in figure 5 shows that by increasing the concentration of the
flocculant the solid precipitation increases but the difference is eligible for the last two
samples in each experiment, and it can be understand more concentration of the
flocculant cause overdosing. Also, feeling the produced water after centrifuging has
showed the amount of polymeric flocculant in the water. Figure 6 shows the complete
dewatering process after centrifuging.

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0
10
20
30
40
50
60
0 3000 6000 9000 11000 14000 17000 20000
Concentration (ppm)

S
o
l
i
d
s

S
e
p
a
r
a
t
i
o
n
(
%
)

Figure 4-Solid precipitation versus concentration of the acid
Centrifuging of the sample after adding acid has shown that there is not more affect on the solid separation
after 17000 ppm. This concentration of acid can be the optimum value in the lab scale

0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
0 40 80 120 160
Concent r at ion (ppm)
S
o
l
i
d
s

S
e
p
a
r
a
t
i
o
n
(
%
)
Only Polymer (wit hout Acid)
Acid = 5700 ppm
Acid = 11500 ppm
Acid = 17200 ppm
Acid = 23000 ppm

Figure 5-Solid precipitation with different concentration of the acid
and flocculants after centrifuge
This graph has provided the solid separation with different concentration of acid and polymer. There is over
dosing on the last two column of the graph as there is not much difference on solid precipitation for 160
ppm of polymer.

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Figure 6- Dewatering simulation of the drilling fluids waste
by the laboratory centrifuge scale

5.1 Economical Consideration
Dewatering has become common in many instances, especially as technology has
advanced and the units have become less expensive. Using cost effective practices such
as dewatering process to get the clear water from drilling wastes reduce operating costs
and also reduce the concern about the environment for exploration and production
companies.
The main benefit of the dewatering process is providing the acceptable format of the
waste discharging. As the economical consideration, the cost of hauling of the waste to
disposal facilities has reduced significantly. In addition the produced water was used as
the recycle water in the system. So the cost of used water in the circulation system is
reduced. The only concern about this process is the quality of the produced water that
must be considered by controlling the pH and other extra ions in the produced water that
must be control in the field.

6 Conclusion
In conclusion, drilling waste management is the decision of using proper technologies
and practices according to environmental requirements to reduce the environmental
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impacts and cost of the waste management plan. The dewatering process describe herein
is one of the efficient treatments to treat the waste before discharging that has been an
expensive technology for many years. But it has been changed to a cost effective option
in drilling site with more flexibility.
Finally, optimization of the chemical consumption in the waste treatment is the hidden
part in the waste management practices that can change expensive practices to the cost
effective solutions. The volume of the drilling fluid waste reduces to at least 50% of the
initial volume after dewatering process with production of the water that can be released
or reused in the drilling system as required.
Acknowledgment
The authors wish to acknowledge the support and assistance provided by Baker Hughes
Drilling Fluids Company in Perth, especially Marc Quesnel; Distric Manager- Drilling
Fluids and Chris Hargreaves; Senior Co-Ordinator, Simon Geraghty; Project
Management Consultant, Dusan Andovski; Fluids Laboratory Technician.
Also special thanks to Dr. Emmazadeh; Petroleum University of Technology and also
Professor R.T. Rajeswaran; Curtin University of Technology.

References
[1] Veil, J .A, Drilling Waste Management: Past, Present, and Future, SPE Annual Technical
Conference and Exhibition, 2002.
[2] Muhammad Ali, Reinhard J . Oswald and Umar Iqbal, SPE Annual Technical Conference,
OMV'S DRILLING WASTE MANAGEMENT A PROACTIVE APPROACH,2004
[3] Drilling Fluid Processing Handbook , Chapter 16 ,ASME Shale Shaker Committee, 2004
[4] Guide to Dewatering Drilling Fluids, Ciba Co. , 1999
[5] Dobias, B. ,Coagulation and Flocculation : Theory and application, 1993
[6] Briji M., Engineering Foundation Conference, Flocculation, Sedimentation and
Consolidation, 1985