What Does
Mud Bucket Mean?
A mud bucket is a containment vessel for the drilling fluid and slurry during the unscrewing of a drill pipe. This ensures that there are no dangerous spills on the drill floor that can cause workers to slip and injure themselves. It also prevents contamination of the surrounding area from spilled drilling fluid.
Horizontal directional drilling (HDD) is a trenchless method that uses lubricating fluid for the drilling process and using mud buckets helps in efficient removal of mud or drilling fluid to the recovery tank for processing and reuse.
Trenchlesspedia Explains Mud Bucket
Drilling operations such as HDD utilize drill rods that are screwed and unscrewed as required. When a drill rod reaches the end of its drive length, the drill head has to be retrieved for attaching another drill pipe to the drill string. During this process, a mud bucket is clamped around the pin and box ends of the drill pipe. When the pipe is unscrewed, the fluids are captured in the mud bucket and directed away from the operation site to the recovery tank.
The mud bucket is then withdrawn to allow workers to screw in another drill pipe to continue drilling. Mud buckets are an important part of a drilling project's fluid control system.