by Bill Ball
The oil and gas industry is evolving, with new drilling technologies pushing production to new heights. Horizontal well completions and multi-stage frac jobs have resulted in higher production of oil, gas, water, and sand. While this increased production benefits the industry, it brings significant challenges, particularly in handling the high volume of produced water and sand. Traditional methods are often inadequate, leading to equipment stress, inefficiencies, and costly downtimes.
This is where KBK’s DFSD® comes into play—a revolutionary Desanding Degassing Flow Splitting tank designed to tackle these challenges head-on. KBK Industries has developed this system to not only de-sand and de-gas inlet water streams but also to divide the flow for optimal efficiency. Let’s break down the technology and see how the DFSD® can improve your operation.
1. What is the DFSD®?
The DFSD® is a patented, innovative tank designed to separate sand and gas from high-volume water streams in CTBs and SWD plants. Its efficiency is driven by proprietary two-stage hydrocyclones, which direct sand downward and gas upward, ensuring that only clean water moves downstream for further treatment.
2. Eliminate Downtime with Smart Sand Management
Sand buildup is a common problem in oil and gas production, leading to frequent downtimes. The DFSD® features a cone bottom design that collects and stores sand. This sand can be easily removed without shutting down operations, thanks to a vacuum system that flushes out the accumulated material. Sand level detectors automate the process, ensuring sand removal is timely and seamless, further preventing costly shutdowns.
3. Boost Revenue with Enhanced Oil Recovery
Paired with KBK’s HWSB® oil skimming tank, the DFSD® offers a two-pronged approach to maximizing oil recovery. The HWSB® tank efficiently separates residual oil from water, capturing up to 99.99% of the oil. By ensuring that no oil is lost to disposal wells, operators can increase their revenue. For example, a CTB processing 45,000 barrels of water per day (BWPD) can recover as much as five barrels of oil per hour, generating millions in additional annual revenue.
4. Why Choose KBK’s DFSD®?
Added Revenue Streams: When used in conjunction with the HWSB® skimming tank, the DFSD® helps capture valuable oil that would otherwise be lost, directly adding to your bottom line.
Proven Efficiency: The DFSD® is designed for modern high-volume production environments, handling the large sand and water loads that have become the norm in oilfields.
No Downtime: By eliminating downtime for sand removal, the DFSD® ensures that operations stay online, maximizing profitability.
Read the technical paper, Desanding, Degassing, Flow Splitting: The What, How, and Why of the DFSD®
Bill Ball is a senior staff consultant to KBK Industries with over 50 years of oilfield engineering experience and holder of twenty-three oil and gas industry related US patents. His credentials represent the culmination of a lifetime of breakthroughs and innovations. Bill’s twenty-three US process equipment patents speak to this. His first patent has become an industry “game changer.” It is the industry’s first true oil-water separation “skim tank”, the “HWSB”. Today there are over 3,500 HWSB® skim tanks separating and capturing oil that used to be injected and lost forever. Bill resides in Bixby, a suburb of Tulsa, Oklahoma.