With recent surge of strict regulations to treat the produced water, many companies start preparing efficient treatment methods to create the end permeate that can be disposed. This produced water is produced in massive amount during the crude oil and gas production either onshore or offshore. Furthermore, this wastewater has distinctive characteristics as it has many different contaminants packed inside which are mostly due to variation of organic and inorganic compounds. However, this water with proper treatment can preserve microbes which are very prominent in it. The key is to maintain the feed for the microbes and remove unnecessary contaminants that hinder microbes activities which creates conducive environment. Thus, the methods for this study was chosen to remove the dissolved oil droplets using coagulation/ flocculation, microfiltration membrane and forward osmosis. These methods will be able to remove grease and oil while maintaining the chemical oxygen demand and other organic compounds that act as the feed for the microbes that are already in the produced water. At the end of the experiment, the conductive environment for the microbes achieved. This enables the end permeate to be further treated with microbial fuel cell that not only treat the organic compounds in the water, it can also produce electricity that can be commercialized.
In the oil and gas industry, the production of oil field produced water is a common problem, especially in ageing fields. The current solution to produce water treatment is to partially treat the produced water through chemical means. However, little effort was taken into consideration to generate electricity through the treatment process. A microbial fuel cell is a bioreactor that converts chemical energy in chemical bonds to electrical energy with the presence of microorganism acting as biocatalyst. With increasing cost of oil field produced water treatment and the raising environmental concerns of produce water disposal. Microbial fuel cells have been widely discussed as a suitable treatment method of oil field produced water as well as a method for generating power through electricity generation. This paper discusses the ability of microbial fuel cell in treating by the removal of chemical oxygen demand and generating electricity from untreated and partially treated oil field produced water. The various pre-treatment methods provide different environments to study the effectiveness of the microbial fuel cell in treating the produced water and generating electricity. In conclusion, microbial fuel cells are capable of treating oil field produced water while generating electricity. At the end of the experiment, it was found that partial treatment that preserves the oil and grease content of the produced water proved to give the best balance between treatment capability of microbial fuel cell and the electricity generated.
Low permeability or formation damage during drilling and completion procedures is often a serious threat to the economic development of a series of Australian oil and gas reserves. In this paper the Pacoota Sandstone in the Amadeus Basin has been considered and the effects of clay mineral morphology, water shock, type and concentration of different salts and varying flow velocity on fines migration were studied. Possible formation damage due to completion fluids and remedial measures such as matrix acidizing were also evaluated.The Pacoota Sandstone has been found to be sensitive to the salt concentration of permeating fluids. If the concentration falls below a threshold value, permeability begins to decrease drastically. Permeability impairment may further be aggravated if the flow rate of the permeating fluid reaches beyond a critical value. It has also been observed that the typical completion fluid reduces the permeability of the near wellbore region to almost half the original permeability. Use of CMHEC base chalk mud, however, reduces the water loss and consequently the permeability impairment by forming an internal filter cake with a typical honeycomb structure. Mud acid with less than 2.5 per cent HF acid concentration has been found to be insufficient to enhance porosity and permeability of the studied sandstone, rather it reduces the permeability by creating formation fines. Afterflush with EGMBE (10 per cent by volume) and HCl acid also helps to clean-up the small fines created during acidizing. The overall increase in porosity and permeability occurs mainly due to formation of large pore channels by matrix dissolution.
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