Conversion of the waste drilling mud to renewable grouting materials in deep shaft sinking

Harmless treatment of the huge volume of contaminative waste drilling mud becomes a challenging task in shaft drilling. Due to the similarity between the mud and clay slurry, waste drilling mud with modifications is pro-posed to replace the clay slurry, to prepare clay-cement-like grouts, i.e. waste drilling mud-cement grout (MTG). Properties of MTG grouts including stability, flowability, plastic strength, groutable period, rheological prop-erties at fresh state and compressive strength at hardened state are experimentally investigated, while case study is employed to examine the applicability of MTG grouts in practical applications. Observed results confirmed the reliability of MTG grouts.