Avaliação da eficiência da secagem de cascalhos oriundos da perfuração de poços de petróleo por micro-ondas e convecção forçada

Abstract

In oil drilling, there are environmental laws that must be followed and are getting stricter every day, to help preserve the environment. In research and development, we seek to solve these problems in order to have greater sustainability in oil and gas drilling processes. The last equipment in the solids control process, in an oil well drilling, has a wet outlet that needs to be dried, for transport and disposal, through an environmentally sustainable mechanism. In this perspective, the objective of this work is to compare the drying of cuttings from oil drilling, from water-based and synthetic-based fluids, in a microwave and forced convection equipment, using the following parameters: time, temperature, power and energy factor. The gravel from the synthetic base fluid from the centrifuge disposal, with 11.27% oil, the oil concentration in the gravel discarded from the dryer is 5.98%, the result of retorting the gravel from the synthetic base fluid. In the experiments with the microwave, the heating time ranges from 0 to 30 minutes, considering 6 min as high power, 10 min as medium power and 15 min as low power. In addition, such experiments were analyzed in the total time capacity of the equipment, with 30 minutes at low, medium and high power and gravel from a water-based fluid, as there was a pre-test with gravel from a synthetic base fluid that passed the point of 200 °C glow. In the forced convection equipment, with a single power of 1500W, 6, 10 and 15 minutes were used in the experiments, while, in the equipment capacity test, with a time of 30 minutes, gravel from a synthetic base fluid was used and water based. Therefore, the use of both devices allowed analyzing the energy factor with a wattmeter, with an average tariff of R$0,610/kWh, in the Northeast region, and the drying of gravel from water-based and synthetic-based fluids.