Construction of pavers from drilling cuttings as an alternative for environmental management of waste

Abstract

The management of drilling waste represents a problem of high economic and environmental impact for operating companies. This is due to its polluting components that, besides being dangerous for the environment, must be treated with special care. The cuttings generated during drilling which are normally impregnated with water-based and oil-based muds, represent most of this solid waste. In this work, it is proposed to treat the drilling cuts to be used as raw material for construction of paving stones that can be used as construction material in platforms and facades of buildings or houses, being an alternative of innovative and high impact disposition. For the foregoing, a determined volume of drilling cuttings from a well of a Magdalena Medio field was used as a test, performing all the usual solids control treatment, passing through shakers, desander, desilter and mud cleaner. After treating the perforation cuts, they were dried in an oven between 110 and 150 °C for 24 hours. Then the sample was allowed to cool to grind it and bring it below 45 microns; where it was finally used as material for the construction of the paving stone, to which the resistance tests established in the NTC 2017 standard were carried out. Results show that the use of some drilling cuttings in the construction industry is viable. Conversely, the comparison was made with a conventional way of managing the gravel when it was reused in the production of cobblestones, obtaining a reduction of up to 34% of the associated costs and when there are greater than 12,000 barrels of waste. Additionally, it is used to generate valuable items and avoids the disposal of waste material