(442c) A Performance Study of an Experimental Vibrating Screen in Treating Water-Sand Slurry

A vibrating screen is the most common solid-liquid filtration equipment in the drilling industry. In the oil drilling industry, these vibrating screens, called shale shakers, separate coarse cuttings from the drilling mud in preparation for reuse of the mud in the borehole. The capacity of drilling mud that a shale shaker can process is dependent upon the operational parameters such as vibration frequency and acceleration, mud rheology, mesh size and the shaker deck angle. The strategy of changing in the performance of a shale shaker by altering in the operational variables is not well understood and characterized.

In this work the performance of a lab scale shale shaker in separation of different sand-water slurry concentrations was studied at various frequencies, accelerations, and deck angles,. The results for slurry concentration less than 4% sand showed that the shaker is capable of separation in a frequency range of 90-120 Hz for the entire range of angles and accelerations. The velocity of the wet filter cake at the outlet of screen decreased with angle and increased with acceleration and frequency.

The experimental results showed the vibrational frequency had the most effect on shaker performance.  Deck angle affected performance to a lesser degree, and vibration acceleration had only a moderate effect on the performance.