It seems like the solids control industry has really made a move to larger machines and I was curious if smaller style machines have any market place any more. We often get involved in selling new and used machines and I have noticed that the once popular NX-418 is a tough sell now. I have a customer that has been trying to sell his and it has been alot more difficult that I imagined. About five years ago it seemed you could move the 418s with no problem and now it has to be 18″ or larger. I was just curious what the market sense is for popular size and if that will keep increasing?
I don’t believe you have to have big bowls. If you need volume run two small bowl machines as apposed to one big bowl. The problem with big bowl decanter centrifuge is if it breaks you are out of luck. Unless you have a second big bowl on your system. To replace the big bowl you have no choice but to get a crane to get it to the repair shop and your time in the shop is weeks at least. If you run two small bowls you would get more volume than a single 18 inch machine. If one goes down you have one still running. You can put two small bowls on one stand so to keep the footprint small. Overall big bows are more to run, maintain and rent than two small bowls. Also have you tried to find big bowls lately.
I agree that was the reason for having the smaller machines in the past (ie provide contingency) however it seems that some people are now doubling up on the larger machines. I didn’t know if that was the new trend. We don’t rent in the drilling industry (mostly municipal) however we do sell into the oilfield which is why I was wondering.
Depends on the application Bob. OBM in the US shales are reused for extended periods of time and I have worked with operators who use the big bowl-small bowl combo for BRC during the well and then run in series for stripping at the end of the well. Displacement dewatering at the end of a WBM job is the same situation where BRC is used during the well and then the units are run in series for the dewatering. As far as a waste of money , depends on how the operator looks at the economics. The only way to truly look at economics is to look at well costs over an extended period time. I think that you will find that many of the major operators still use big bowl-small bowl combos where they have good data on a field and where disposal costs are high do to environmental regulations.
All that being said, the only true way to process any stream is to process the complete stream. Drilling mud is the only process that I know where it has been acceptable to process 10% to 25% of a fuild stream and call it good. Even with big bowls on BRC you may be processing 25% of the circulation on a good day. That is the reason my partners and I have developed a patent pending BRC process based on our combined 100 years experience in this business. A big bowl or two small bowls will be needed to process the LGS on the effluent of this process. Fine tuning is in process now and announcements are forthcoming.
decanter centrifuge