Nikiski inventor patents heated tailgate to keep drill slurry from freezing

A Nikiski man has earned a federal patent for a fix to a cold-weather headache on Alaska's oil fields: a heated door that keeps drilling waste from freezing before crews can dump it.

The inventor, Ryan Peterkin, knows the problem firsthand. He runs a Kenai-based oilfield-services company with a service center up in Deadhorse, on the North Slope, and his invention tackles something his own crews deal with. Drilling a well produces "cuttings slurry" — a wet, muddy mix of pulverized rock hauled away in vacuum tanks. In Alaska and northern Canada, that slurry can freeze solid inside the tank before it can be unloaded, and prying open a frozen tank door again and again wears out the seal that keeps it shut.

Peterkin's answer is a tailgate with heat built into it. The door circulates warmed fluid through a loop across its inner face, so the slurry pressed against it stays thawed and dumps cleanly. It's the latest in a string of inventions he's patented since 2020, all aimed at moving this drilling waste in the cold without it turning to ice.

The design also engineers for extreme cold. It calls for steel tough enough to stay intact down to about 50 below zero Celsius — colder than the steel typically used for these containers, which can start to turn brittle and crack around 45 below. That extra margin is the difference between gear that works through a Slope winter and gear that fails in it.