Rotary thermal desorption technology for treatment of oil-based drilling cuttings in shale gas industry

[Display omitted] •The 0.14–0.2% oil content of treated cuttings qualified the environmental standards.•The temperature difference between device and cuttings became less than 5 K.•The recovered oil was recyclable C9-C23 alkanes.•Through technical evaluation, the oil removal efficiency score of this technology was high. Oil-based drilling cuttings are hazardous wastes in shale gas exploitation and need careful treatments to reduce environmental pollution and waste of resources. One of most widely employed waste-treatment technologies is the thermal desorption due to its high oil recovery efficiency. However, it usually suffers low heat exchange efficiency, thus leveraging operation costs and equipment instability. Toward the end of alleviating limitation, this study rationally designs the structure of the heating component under the guidance of the flat wall heat conduction theory, and uses numerical simulation to analyze the heat transfer of the structure. A rotary thermal desorption technology was thus developed and evaluated. The simulation results showed that given a short time of 800 s the temperature difference between device and cuttings became less than 5 K, indicating good heat exchange efficiency. Large inlet radius of device and high inlet velocity of heat transfer oil were critical parameters to maintain high heat transfer rate. Through industrial experiments verification, the 0.14–0.2 % oil content of treated cuttings qualified the environmental standards. The components of the recovered oil were recyclable C9-C23 alkanes, and the dichromate oxidizability of recovered water was less than 500 mg/L limit. Comparing with other technologies, the scores suggested that this technology was a promising candidate for treating oil-based drilling cuttings.