Brandt 20 × 4-inch desilter

A desilter removes finer solids than a desander. Four-inch hydrocyclones take silt-size particles after the 10-inch cones have taken out the sand. Twenty cones is a common bank on a larger land rig. The same cones are sometimes set over a fine-screen shaker, and that combination is a mud cleaner.

It fits a mud system that already has shakers and, usually, a desander ahead of it. The phrase “20 × 4-inch” is the cone count and the cone size. It is not one catalog assembly, a flow rate, or a cut point. Those come from the manifold, the feed pressure, and the condition of each cone.

A 3 × 10-inch package is the desander in front of this bank. A 16-cone bank of 4-inch cones is a smaller desilter, even if the listing says desilter and the cones look the same. Screens under the cones make it a mud cleaner. Cones alone, dumping to a pit, are a desilter.

Count every cone. Check that each one still has an apex and a vortex finder. Ask whether the feed pump and a shaker are part of the skid. A short bank will not process the same volume as a 20-cone bank, whatever the stencil on the manifold says.