At a drilling rig site, there is a lot of equipment and machinery. One of the most important pieces of equipment is the shale shaker screen. Shale shakers are your first piece of equipment for drilling solids and your main piece of equipment for controlling solids. They are important for figuring out how well your drilling mud and centrifuge will work.
Because shale shakers are the most critical component of a rig’s mud solids control system, greater care is being taken to maintain them and select the appropriate parts and tools. Shale shaker screens take out the mud’s bigger pieces that are bigger than the mesh size. These pieces could be stones that came with the mud from the rig during the drill, hardened mud, or other things.
The mud goes through the screen, and with the help of the vibrator flow, the big pieces fall out. The cleaned mud is kept in a separate tank so it can be used again in the drilling process, and the impurities are dissolved to be used for something else.
The choice of shake screens depends on how the cuttings form, the type of bit, and the properties of the mud. Most of the time, mesh sizes 50, 84, and 110 are large enough to filter out large solids from mud. This makes the mud clean enough to use again. It was put on the first interaction, at the top of the screen, or on the screen’s surface. The mud that gets through this layer goes to the main screening layer, where the mesh gets as fine as 320 mesh.
The main things that help you choose the right screen are the size of the solids, the weight of the mud, its viscosity and density, etc. If you choose the wrong screen, expensive drilling fluids might go to waste, the pumps might break down early, you might have overload problems with other solids removal equipment like a decanting centrifuge. It might also shorten the life of your equipment, slow down the rate of penetration, and cause serious problems in the well.
We now know that a shale shaker screen is an integral part of the drilling equipment. However, due to constant and heavy-duty use, they are bound to wear at some point of time. The mud and debris accumulating in the screen can lead to holes in the screen, causing the drilling fluid to flow through and go to waste. Therefore, whenever such a thing happens, it’s time for a replacement screen.
Now we know why the shaker screen is important on a drilling rig. It’s important to choose the right micron for the screen, but it’s also important to choose the right mesh size and metal grade. If you bought a low-quality metal screen, it would get damaged so quickly that it would cost more to fix and take more time to fix. This would hurt your production and raise your operating costs by 20–40%.
The Replacement for Derrick FLC 500 Series is one of the best shale shaker replacement screens that are suitable for all purposes. It uses the most up-to-date powder glue so that it will stick under high pressure.
Its screen rubber can handle both muds with an oil base and muds with a water base. Because of its high quality and low price, the replacement Shale Shaker FLC 500 screen for Derrick is the most popular screen model.
All FLC 500-series shale shakers use Derrick’s 500-series screens, which come in three different types: pyramid, pyramid plus, and PWP. The innovative single-side tensioning system on the FLC 500 cuts the average time it takes to change a screen panel to less than a minute for each panel. Each screen panel has two Quick-Lok 1/2-turn tensioning bolts and two tensioning fingers that make this easier, faster, and more reliable.
There are two-dimensional and three-dimensional screens.
Two-dimensional screens can be put into these categories:
Shale shaker screens that are three-dimensional are plate screens with holes and a corrugated surface that runs in the same direction as the flow of fluid. This arrangement gives you more screen space than the two-dimensional screen arrangement. These are the different kinds of three-dimensional screens:
Screens for shale shakers are chosen based on the area’s geography and geology. Screen combinations that can handle certain flow rates in the Middle East or Far East, for example, might not be able to handle the same flow rates in the Rocky Mountains or Norway. The best way to choose shale shaker screens or figure out how many shale shakers to use at a certain drilling site is to first ask a qualified solids control advisor from the area for advice. For more help, records of how the screen is used should be kept.
First, stop the shale shaker. If you can, pass the drilling mud to the other (or other) shaker(s) to be cleaned or processed. If the screens are secured by wedge blocks, you can lower them by knocking out the blocks in the other direction. When the blocks are loose, take them out and pick up the screen panel. Change out the old panel with a new one.
If the screens are held in place by a tensioning bar and bolts, loosen the bolts and take out the bars, or just take out the panels. We know that there are many ways to put the panels up. The traditional one has a tensioning bar, while newer ones have a pressing pin or air compression. Irrespective of which way you want to go, you should first loosen the tensioning tool.
The Shaker screen should change based on how many people want it to. It depends on the drilling depth, the rate of fluid flow, the type of mud, and so on.
Screen Even in the best conditions, the life of fine mesh screens varies a lot from design to design because of differences in how they work. Follow these general rules to get the most out of your screen:
The amount of mud that can pass through a screen without flooding depends a lot on the type of shale shaker and the conditions of the drilling. Screen mesh, drilling rate, type, weight, and viscosity of drilling fluids, type of drilling bit, and type of formation all have some effect on throughput.
The mesh of the screen also has a direct effect on shaker capacity. In general, but not always, the finer the mesh of a screen, the less material it can move through the finer the mesh of a screen, the less material it can move through. The rate of drilling influences screen capacity because as the amount of drilled solids increases, the effective screen area available for mud throughput remains constant.
Increased viscosity, which is usually caused by a rise in the amount of solids by volume or a rise in the weight of the mud, has a big negative effect on screen capacity. As a general rule, if the viscosity goes up by 10%, the throughput capacity goes down by 2-5%.
Conclusion:
As we already mentioned, a screen can wear with time. However, when you get the ideal replacement screen, then your drilling equipment will resume its peak performance again. In such cases, nothing beats the Derrick FLC500 series replacement screen, which will do the job perfectly. These are highly durable replacement screens made with premium quality material which are available from Solids Control World, a reputed supplier of Derrick FLC500 series replacement screens who have been in this business for a long period. Most importantly, they will not make a hole in your pocket!
So, if you need quality replacement screens at an affordable price, contact Solids Control World today!
