Month: December 2025

With the surge in urban infrastructure projects—such as shield tunneling, deep piling, and trenchless piping—managing the massive volumes of construction slurry has become critical for project timelines and environmental compliance. Slurry separation system have emerged as the industry-standard solution for efficient solid-liquid separation.

Technical Core: Multi-Stage Solid-Liquid Separation Process

The slurry separation system is an integrated system of solids control units designed for slurry recycling and waste minimization:

Pre-treatment: Scalping screens remove bulk gravel and clay clumps to protect downstream equipment.

Sand & Silt Removal: Desander and desilter hydrocyclones utilize centrifugal force to separate medium-to-fine particles.

Dewatering: For high-clay slurry, chemical conditioning promotes flocculation. Decanter centrifuges or filter presses then produce low-moisture “filter cakes” for easy disposal.

Fluid Reuse: Purified liquid is pumped back for immediate reuse, maintaining a closed-loop operation.

Professional Alignment with Industry Application Scenarios

Slurry separation system offer high adaptability across four core underground engineering sectors:

Slurry Balance Shield (TBM): Handles high flow rates while precisely controlling density and viscosity to maintain face pressure.

Bored Piling: Provides compact, rapid-deployment solutions for rotary, reverse circulation, and impact drilling.

Diaphragm Walls: Supports trenching with hydraulic grabs or cutters, ensuring slurry stability and trench quality.

Trenchless Construction: Rapidly purifies slurry in HDD and pipe jacking to minimize urban environmental impact.

Value Realization: Compliance and Cost Optimization

Environmental Benefits: Slurry separation system achieves waste minimization at the source, eliminating the pollution risks of traditional mud pits and meeting green construction standards.

Economic Benefits: Recycling significantly cuts costs for fresh water and bentonite. Additionally, dewatered filter cakes reduce waste volume and transportation fees, enhancing overall efficiency.

The Slurry Separation system is an essential component of modern underground engineering. Optimal system selection requires a scientific analysis of the excavation strata to balance performance and cost-effectiveness. KOSUN provides customized designs tailored to global geological conditions and specific onsite requirements.

As oil and gas exploration continues to advance into deep, ultra-deep, and complex operating conditions, the demands for drilling efficiency, safety, and environmental protection have significantly increased. As a crucial component of the overall drilling solid control system, the Liquid Mud Plant has become key infrastructure for ensuring a stable supply of drilling fluid, reducing operational costs, and enhancing environmental protection levels.

A Liquid Mud Plant is a specialized system for the storage, preparation (mixing), circulation, weighting, conditioning, and transportation of drilling fluid. It typically consists of several functional areas: drilling mud storage area (tank system), drilling mud preparation and weighting system, solid control and circulation treatment devices, pumping and transportation system, and automated monitoring and safety control systems. In onshore drilling, offshore platforms, centralized mud supply bases, and the production systems of oilfield service companies, the mud station acts as a “logistics center,” ensuring different well sites can obtain stable, high-quality drilling fluid on demand.

Core Functions of a Liquid Mud Plant

Drilling Fluid Storage: The mud station is equipped with multiple tanks of different capacities and functions for the segregated storage of water-based mud (WBM), oil-based mud (OBM), high-density mud, completion fluids, etc. These tanks typically feature: anti-corrosion inner walls, heating coils, level monitoring, overflow prevention and safety protection, and a movable or skid-mounted structure.

Drilling Fluid Preparation and Mixing: According to well condition requirements, the mud station can rapidly complete the large-scale pre-mixing and conditioning of drilling fluid, including: adding weighting agents (barite, hematite), adding chemical additives, maintaining rheological properties, and high-capacity shear mixing. An efficient preparation system can significantly reduce waiting time at the well site and improve operational efficiency.

Drilling Fluid Circulation and Solid Control: By configuring solid control equipment such as shale shakers, desanders, desilters, and centrifuges, the system achieves: solid phase control, solid-liquid separation, removal of suspended solids, and optimization and reuse of mud properties. This is of great significance for reducing drilling costs, extending equipment life, and minimizing waste discharge.

Drilling Fluid Pumping and Transportation: The mud station uses mud pumps, metering systems, and loading arms to transport the conditioned drilling fluid to: onshore well sites, offshore platforms, tank trucks, vessels, or supply boats. This ensures an efficient “on-call” supply capability.

Modern drilling operations have increasingly stringent requirements for mud performance, cost, and environmental protection. The Liquid Mud Plant maximizes the value of drilling fluid through efficient recovery and recycling, substantially reducing mud consumption and waste disposal costs. A completed mud station enables centralized supply and recycling of oil-based mud, effectively reducing total usage, which lowers construction costs while mitigating safety and environmental risks. The mud station adopts a centralized, large-scale treatment model, allowing for unified pollutant management, control of total discharge volume, reduction of environmental diffusion, and realization of green operations.

Furthermore, a single mud station construction can service multiple wells, resulting in less onsite equipment, a smaller footprint, and no waste accumulation, reducing environmental assessment pressure and construction costs from the source. It also lowers electrical load and lessens reliance on the drilling rig, making drilling operations safer and more efficient. By further optimizing the mud formulation ratio, the mud station can also enhance OBM performance, standardize operational procedures, ensure drilling quality, and provide reliable assurance for accelerating construction efficiency.

Currently, there are mainly three methods to address HDD mud problems: sedimentation, dilution, and mechanical removal.

Sedimentation: One or more mud pits are dug at the entry and exit points of the crossing. The returned mud is channeled into the pits. After a certain period of natural settling, the upper liquid phase is extracted for the mud circulation system, and the bottom solid phase is discarded. Advantages: Simple operation, low cost, low energy consumption; Disadvantages: Large footprint required, slow settling/separation speed, and the bottom solid phase is difficult to clear out.

Dilution: The mud returned from the crossing is collected in mud tanks, and then water, bentonite, and additives are added to adjust the mud properties required for the crossing, aiming to reduce the solid content of the mud. Advantages: Simple method, low cost; Disadvantages: Incomplete solid phase removal.

Mechanical Removal: This method uses a solids control system to separate the solid phase. A solids control system refers to a setup composed of shale shakers, desanders, desilters, desander cleaners, desilter cleaners, horizontal decanter centrifuges, and circulating large tanks, configured according to specific solids control requirements. In most cases, mechanical removal is the most effective and economical method.

As can be seen, the most effective and feasible means of treating mud currently is mechanical removal. For example, the Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD) Mud Recycling System produced by Xi’an KOSUN Machinery is an effective mechanical removal solution for solving mud pollution.

The KOSUN Machinery Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD) Mud Recycling System uses a multi-stage purification process of “shale shaker + desander + desilter” to efficiently separate solid particles from the mud, achieving over 90% mud recycling and reuse. Specifically, the shale shaker can remove solid particles >1.5mm, the desander can remove solid particles from 0.074mm to 1.5mm, and the desilter can remove solid particles from 0.02mm to 0.074mm. After treatment, the suspended solids in the separated wastewater are ≤50mg/L, allowing it to be directly reused in construction or discharged in compliance with standards; the dried cuttings can be made into road base materials or green planting soil, truly achieving “zero mud pollution discharge”. The system has also passed ISO14001 environmental certification, adapting to strict environmental protection policies.

In addition, the KOSUN Machinery Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD) Mud Recycling System features a compact design that significantly reduces the required footprint, allowing it to function fully even in space-constrained construction environments.

The core value of the KOSUN Machinery Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD) Mud Recycling System lies in transforming mud from a “polluting waste” into a “recyclable resource.” Through breakthroughs in environmental compliance, cost optimization, and efficiency improvement, the system not only provides a compliant solution for HDD construction but also promotes the green transformation of the trenchless industry.