Segmented Wire Screen for Microchip Recovery in Drilling Fluids
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current methods fail to effectively recover and separate encased microchips from drilling fluids in hydrocarbon production, which are essential for analyzing wellbore properties during drilling operations.
Innovation Solution
A wire screen with parallel wires and strategically designed bent segments that form traps with openings wider than the microchips, allowing them to be captured while allowing larger cuttings to pass through, is used to separate microchips from the drilling fluid, either upstream or downstream of a shaker table.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If a conventional screen is used to separate microchips from drilling fluid, then the microchips can be recovered, but the separation efficiency is insufficient and manual intervention is required
Solution Approach 1:
The screen is segmented into multiple wires running parallel to one another, with each wire containing multiple bends that create individual traps. This segmentation allows for efficient capture of microchips across the entire screen surface, improving separation efficiency while maintaining a simple automated structure.
Solution Approach 2:
The bent wires automatically form traps that capture microchips without requiring manual intervention. The traps self-regulate by allowing drilling fluid and cuttings to pass through while retaining microchips based on size differences, enabling automated operation.
2Reliability
If the screen openings are made smaller to capture microchips, then microchip recovery is improved, but larger cuttings cannot pass through
Solution Approach 1:
The screen structure implements local quality by creating traps with specific dimensions at localized positions along the wires. The trap openings are sized to capture microchips while the overall screen structure maintains larger effective openings for drilling fluid flow, resolving the contradiction between capture effectiveness and flow rate.
Solution Approach 2:
The wire bends create three-dimensional trap structures that extend perpendicular to the screen plane. This dimensional change allows the traps to capture microchips effectively while maintaining adequate flow pathways in the plane of the screen for drilling fluid and cuttings to pass through.
3Reliability
If more wires are added to improve separation coverage, then microchip recovery increases, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
Multiple functional elements are merged into a single wire structure. Each wire contains multiple bends that create multiple traps along its length, combining the functions of multiple separate trap elements into one continuous component. This reduces the number of discrete parts and simplifies the overall device structure while maintaining complete separation coverage.
Data Source
AI summary
Multiple wires run parallel to one another. Each of wires is spaced apart from each adjacent wire at a distance less than a width of an encased microchip. Each of the plurality of wires includes a plurality of straight segments in a plane and bent segments that connect two of the plurality of straight segments. For each of the wires, each bent segments includes a first end, a second end, and a curved portion curved away from the plane. The first end is connected to at least one of the straight segments and separated from the second end a distance greater than the width of the encased microchip. The curved portion includes a diameter greater than the width of the encased microchip.