COMPARISON OF EFFICIENCY OF A FRYER AND A MICROWAVE FOR DRYING GRAVEL IN OIL DRILLING: FOCUS ON SUSTAINABLE ENVIRONMENTAL DISPOSAL.
Production, Oil, Sustainability.
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, with water base and paraffin base, in a microwave and a fryer, using the following parameters: time, temperature, power and energy factor. The paraffin based gravel from the centrifuge disposal, with 11.27% oil, in the oil concentration in the gravel discarded from the dryer, is 5.98%, resulting from the retort of the paraffin-based gravel. In the experiments with the microwave, the heating time ranges from 0 to 30 minutes, considering 6 min at high power, 10 min at medium power and 15 min at low power. In addition, such experiments were analyzed in the total time capacity of the equipment, with 30 minutes at low, medium and high powers and water-based gravel, as there was a pre-test with paraffin-based gravel that exceeded the flash point of 200 °C. In the electric fryer, 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, paraffin-based and water-based gravel were used. Therefore, the use of both equipment allowed the analysis of the energy factor with a wattmeter, with an average tariff of R$0,610/kWh, in the Northeast region, and the drying of water-based and paraffin-based gravel.