Drilling fluid degassers are used to prevent oil gas water showings and, according to the requirements of current Safety Regulations, they are necessarily included in the circulation systems of drilling rigs. At the same time, there is a lack of uniform requirements for the design of degassers, and an unreasonably wide variety of them is observed on drilling rigs. The purpose of the article is to analyze the known designs of drilling mud degassers in order to identify advantages and disadvantages and develop recommendations for choosing a rational option. Degassers are classified into low-vacuum and vacuum. Low-vacuum can be divided into fan (atmospheric) and vacuum-pumping. The main characteristic of all types of drilling mud degassers is the productivity of the treated mud, which must be at least the maximum supply of drilling pumps in the gas-hazardous interval. In this case, the degasser must remove all free gas from the drilling mud. It is shown that in high vacuum, gas bubbles (even very small ones) rapidly increase and burst in the rarefaction environment. At the same time, the effectiveness of low-vacuum degassers has not been proven, and they are used not because of their effectiveness, but because of the inconveniences that arise when starting vacuum apparatus. In Russian conditions, it is recommended to use vacuum degassers with cyclic unloading. The main advantage of this type of degasser in comparison with degassers with jet pumps is the absence of a slurry pump and independence from the presence of a conditioned mud in the tanks. It is recommended to pay attention to the variety of these devices with the placement of the receiver on the body. This cyclic discharge degasser is compact, protected from uncontrolled leaks, and can be equipped with a heated water tank.
References
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