engleski

Environmental Aspects of Waste Generation and Disposal in Petroleum Engineering

Waste as the result of petroleum engineering activities is generated through drilling, completing or workover in wells, producing, transporting or storage processes. Drilling process is the generator of the highest amount of solid and liquid waste. Removal of drilled solids from drilling fluid has been a problem since the introduction of rotary drilling. Proper set up and sequence of mechanical control equipment is essential to a successful solids removal program. Application of effective solid control equipment and efficient drilled solids removal reduces mud consumption and cost, and can enhance drilling performance by providing cleaner mud with minimum low gravity solids content. Good solids control techniques reduce the amount of waste by providing cleaner discharges and less mud to dispose at the end of the well. Deeper drilling, rising drilling costs, and increasingly more stringent governmental regulation demand the use of the closed-loop fluids processing system as an efficient and economical method of solids control. The same problem appears in completion and workover activities, introducing wastes of chemical treatments (resins), acidizing (acids), etc. In production transportation and storage systems, discharged of produced hard particles (sand, silt) and formation water should also be deposited securely. The problem of liquid waste or liquid to solid slurry mixture disposal has been solved by injecting it in the waste injection wells. Overall discharge system efficiency and methods of waste injection are elaborated in the paper.

Petroleum engineering; waste discharge; environmental impact; waste management; downhole injection

nije evidentirano