Construction, Operation, and Performance Evaluation of a Continuous Supercritical Fluid Extraction Process for the Recovery of Hydrocarbons from Drill Cuttings

• Author / Creator

  Street, Christianne G.

• The primary outcome of this research is the design, construction, commissioning, and operation of a novel, pilot-scale, continuous supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) process for recovering drilling fluid hydrocarbons from drill cuttings-water slurries. Counter-current flow of slurry and supercritical carbon dioxide (SC CO2) was successfully demonstrated, and hydrocarbon was extracted from the cuttings.

  The performance of the SFE process was measured by extraction efficiency and overall mass transfer coefficients of which a maximum 95.8 % and 9.69 × 10^-4 s^-1, respectively, were achieved. Calculation of the extraction efficiency and overall mass transfer coefficient required the adaptation of a cold-shake solvent extraction method from the literature to determine the hydrocarbon content of cuttings. Additionally, the solubility of a drilling fluid hydrocarbon in SC CO2 was experimentally measured, and the data was fit to the Chrastil correlation, in order to calculate the overall volumetric mass transfer coefficients.

  Analysis of the operating and performance results provides recommendations for prioritizing future work, including introducing a slurry level measurement device for the bottom of the vessel, increasing the flow rates of SC CO2 and slurry, and increasing the density by testing higher pressures.

  The outcomes of this thesis demonstrate that the SFE process can extract hydrocarbons from drill cuttings-water slurries. The performance results provide useful recommendations towards the future commercialization of the process.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • drilling waste
  • continuous flow
  • Chrastil
  • supercritical fluid extraction
  • drill cuttings
  • drilling fluid
  • process commercialization
  • pilot-scale
  • overall volumetric mass transfer coefficient
  • carbon dioxide
  • baffle column
  • solubility in supercritical carbon dioxide

• Graduation date

  Fall 2020

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-vszt-kr32

• License

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