Performance Study of a Bench Scale Shale Shaker Saeid G. Benis 15 Abstract The shale shaker has been an important operation in the drilling industry for many years for removing sand and coarse particles from drilling fluids. The performance envelopes of most shale shakers were determined empirically. Systematic empirical studies of full scale shakers are difficult and expensive to conduct due to the high volumetric flow rates of drill fluid and coarse materials flowing through the shaker. In a recent effort to reduce the experimental costs, a bench scale shale shaker was fabricated. As an initial performance characterization of the bench scale shaker, the bench scale shaker was evaluated in the separation of sand from a sand-water slurry. Fig.2. Schematic diagram of the bench scale shale shaker The results of mass rate of filter cake showed that the mass rate decreases with increasing shaker angle and increases with increasing acceleration.   The data showed that cake velocity increased with increasing acceleration and decreasing shaker angle. In concentration 6% unlike 2 and 4%, the minimum acceleration required to separate sand starts from mass offset 60. By increasing concentration in frequency range 60 to 80, the governing parameter in filtration is the shaker angle. The nullifying effects of acceleration and angle on the shaker is dependent on the frequency. The most important parameters affecting the porosity of filter cake are frequency and mass offset. By increasing frequency, the porosity decreases while angle didn’t show any influence on the porosity. Results Completed Works Experiments with Screen XR 120 and XR 325 have been finished. Experiments for determining porosity of sand balls have been completed. Future Works Study of effect of mesh size on the porosity. Applying Multi Gene Genetic programming for prediction of the shaker performance Fig.1. Porosity values in all angles for 4% sand