Overview

Strict environmental regulations require solids arising from pro-duction operations, such as during sand jetting or simply sand from formation wells to be cleaned for overboard disposal or trans-ported for treatment and disposal. FLSmidth gMAX Systems offers a unique sand cleaning system to the Oil and Gas industry for ef-ficient treatment of oily solids. This sand cleaning process can be utilized to jetting water, produced water clean up operations and water re-injection. By installing a sand cleaning system, enhanced performance and longer life to existing equipment can be achieved.

Main sand wash steps are:

• Capture of sand • Fluidization of captured sand • Sand Cleaning (re-circulation of oily sand /water slurry) • Sand Discharge • Recycle and cleaning of wash water / solvent (if needed)

Principles of Operation

During the separation process, sand enters the liquid filled containment vessel, (separate accumulator) and is allowed to settle by gravity. Any oil that separates from the solids dur-ing settling in the containment vessel will accumulate at the high point of the containment vessel for later removal.

Once the sand is ready for sand wash, the pump is turned on to fluidize the sand. Once the solids are fluidized, the slurry is then pumped to the sand wash cyclone. Oil is stripped from the solids through attrition and cleaned sand is allowed to settle into the containment vessel. The separated and coalesced oil will exit the cyclone and be either routed back to the contain-ment vessel after passing through a deoiler via the overflow.

Advantages of a gMAX Sand Wash System

• Compact compared to other non cyclone based sand wash system. • Low maintenance requirement with cyclones • Proven technology - Pilot trials carried out in the North Sea fields have shown that sand may easily be cleaned to well below the 10g/ Kg solids

• The system is usually designed to operate at low pressure where only 150# ANSI rat- ing is required, essentially reducing cost, size and weight. • Since this is a batch system, no continuous monitoring and control is required (Normally the operational control principles are se- lected in close cooperation with the client)

Sand Cleaning & Collection

Advanced, Proven Design with Documented History of Solving Sand Management

Problems

An upstream oil & gas separation company that specializes in solids management and produced water treatment through engineered systems.

gMAX CycloWash®

A closed desanding hydrocylone fitted with an elutriation water-washing device, CycloWash®, has proven effective at oil remov-al from sand slurry. The slurry is fed into the gMAX unit, where hydrocyclonic action separates the solids to the underflow. High shear forces from the vortex flow, along with particle-particle and particle-cyclone interaction will “scrub” the oil coating from the sand particles. The solids will continue to spiral downward towards the apex, and enter the CycloWash® chamber, while the free oil droplets will report to the overflow. In the CycloWash® chamber, clean water is injected via 4 tangential inlets. The clean water serves the dual purpose of providing additional agitation (cleaning), and elutriation of any oil droplets that may be carried with the sand. The freed oil is forced to the desander overflow, while the clean sand collects in the accumulation chamber.

System Description

The basis for the cleaning system is to re-circulate the solids in a slurry, through a pumped “loop” so that the oil is scrubbed from the solids by a process of at-trition.

A typical system consists of:

1. Sand wash hydrocyclone 2. Solid containment vessel 3. Re-circulation slurry pump or eductor jet pump 4. Actuated valves programmed for sequence op- eration 5. Deoiler to clean recirculated water (optional) 6. Water Storage Tank (optional) 7. Sand Bin/Sand Bag System to dewater solids and allow for further transportation (optional)

Sand Cleaning & Collection

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• EMAIL gmax@flsmidth.com • www.gmaxsystems.com •