What is a Sand Separator?

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Learn what a sand sep is and how you should choose the best one for your operation.

Sand is a serious problem in the oil and gas industry. Occurring due to unconsolidated formations, high production rates, reservoir depletion, and other reasons, sand particles in the production stream can erode equipment and cause massive damage to chokes, control valves, pumps, compressors, and more.

As a result, operators have to deal with production downtime due to frequent shutdowns for maintenance and cleanout, throwing operations off course.

With the right sand separator for the well, however, operators can have peace of mind knowing their equipment will function effectively and will not be subject to damage and erosion. In this article, we’ll cover not only what a sand separator is, but also the different types of sand seps that are available on the market today. By the end, you’ll know exactly how to choose the best sand separator for your operation.

What is a sand separator? 

A sand separator is a pressure-rated vessel that is designed to remove sand particles from produced fluids in order to protect downstream oil and gas equipment.

Wells produce a mixture of oil, gas, water, and sand. Operators install a sand separator upstream of processing equipment to force sand particles to drop out of the flow before the fluids continue down the system. Sand separators protect chokes, valves, pipelines, compressors, and other equipment and parts from erosion.

While sand separators are most often used during the flowback phase, they are also necessary during early production and steady state phases to minimize erosion, prevent equipment failure, and minimize costly downtime.

What are the different types of sand separators?

There are a multitude of sand separators on the market today. You will come across a number of different names for them, including: 

• Sand sep
• Sand trap
• Sand knock-out
• Desander
• Sand can
• Spherical sand trap
• Wellhead desander
• Cyclonic sand separator
• Hydrocyclone

Some sand separators use cyclone force while others use gravity to separate sand from water. However, while all sand separators claim to do the same thing, they do not work with the same efficiency — and will not all get you the same results.

Many sand separators on the market today are non-engineered solutions. This means that while they are pressure vessels that meet API or ASME standards and codes and are safe to use at your wellsite, they have not been built by engineers who understand the physics of fluid dynamics and separation.

Non-Engineered Sand Separators

Non-engineered sand separators have very little optimization and almost no customization opportunities — they are off-the-shelf equipment that is supposed to be one-size-fits-all regardless of the parameters of your well.

As a result, these non-engineered sand seps only achieve between 50% and 65% sand capture efficiency in moderate-to-challenging sand production applications. With so much sand getting through to downstream equipment, operators are still dealing with erosion and sand damage.

In order to ensure minimal damage to production facilities, you need to have sand separation levels over 95%. These types of results are only available with engineered sand separators — like EnerCorp’s hydrocyclones.

What stands out about EnerCorp’s sand separators?

EnerCorp specializes in engineered sand separators and sand management equipment. Our team of in-house engineers focus on researching and developing the most effective sand separation technology, and continuously optimizing it for the best results.

Our industry-leading sand separators, the Sahara Advanced Cyclone and the Mojave Sand Cyclone, use centrifugal force to separate sand from the production stream, resulting in virtually all sand removed from the production stream — a significant improvement from the non-engineered sand seps which only capture 50%-65% of sand.

In addition to our top-of-the-line hydrocyclones, EnerCorp also offers a number of other sand management solutions that are built using our Sahara Advanced Cyclone as a foundation:

• SmartSahara: For real-time internal sand quantification and monitoring
• High-Capacity Sahara Sand Cyclone: Double the sand management power for high-producing wells
• Sahara Facility Cyclone: A higher capacity and lower pressure unit for production facilities 
• eFlowback technology: A highly engineered automated solution that combines industry-leading sand separation technology with automation, measurement systems, and cloud-based software

How can EnerCorp customize sand separators?

Not all wells are the same, which means you cannot use the same desander on every well. That’s where EnerCorp’s custom fabrication shop comes in. With a 5,000 ft2 fabrication facility in Grande Prairie, Alberta, we stand on our decades of experience building and operating engineered production equipment to develop products you can trust to get the job done.

Whether you need a desander for cold-weather geography in northern Canada or a sand sep for a steady-state well in the Grand Prairie region, our engineers can customize equipment that meets the exact requirements of the application. 

We take into consideration a number of operating conditions, including:

• Range of flow rates
• Varying wellhead pressures
• Solids and sand particle sizes

Our product design considerations factor in:

• Cost
• Inlet size and geometry
• Outlet size
• Cone diameter and height
• Downpipe diameter and height
• Various wall geometries

The result? A highly engineered, fully customized sand separator that removes virtually all of the sand from the well stream in order to protect downstream equipment.