ABS Materials has developed a new type of swellable organophilic material that extracts a wide array of dissolved hydrocarbons from oil field waters. With funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (SBIR Program) orchestrated through the National Energy Technology Laboratory, ABS Materials has been engineering systems to use swellable glass to treat flow back waters to remove dissolved organics. Two pilot scale systems were built: a non-regenerating skid-mounted system which handles inputs of up to 4 gal/min and a 60 gal/min trailer mounted system which included a mechanism for swellable glass regeneration.
Technology Update Clean water is a precious resource. For decades, nations and companies have been successfully treating water from industrial processes to convert it to contaminant-free clean water. The oil and gas industry generates an estimated 70 billion bbl of contaminated water from crude oil and natural gas extraction (Boysen et al. 2013). And as reserves are drawn down through production, operators are forced to extract from areas that generate higher volumes of produced water and must implement advanced recovery techniques. However, these recovery methods can alter water/oil mixtures and reduce conventional water treatment efficiency by up to 50% (Walsh and Henthorne 2012). In addition, regulatory agencies are enforcing stricter water treatment measures such as limiting soluble hydrocarbon emissions. These issues are just some of the produced-water management challenges facing today’s operators. New water treatment technologies and developments in conventional treatment methods offer a means to solve these problems in managing produced water volumes. ProSep’s Osorb Media Systems (OMS) are providing a unique solution for treating the water coming from chemical enhanced oil recovery (CEOR) operations and removing the dissolved hydrocarbons, including benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene, and xylene (BTEX). The OMS incorporate Osorb, a powerful adsorption technology that can remove dissolved and dispersed hydro-carbons from produced water in a single step. However, the singular, ground-breaking advance achieved by this adsorption media technology is an integrated, in-situ regeneration process that allows the powerful adsorption media to be used for many years, which eliminates the costly and hazardous media changeouts required with previous adsorption media. The industry has investigated the use of adsorption media in the past but has found the operating cost too high because of media replacement needs and the operating envelope too limited (Boysen et al. 2013). OMS address both of these challenges by enabling economical water treatment, at a cost as low as $0.07/bbl, and offering applications for removing contaminants that range from heavy dispersed oil to dissolved hydrocarbons and that are effective in the presence of oilfield chemicals.
Clean water is a precious resource in the world. For decades, nations and companies have focused on delivering contaminant-free clean water as a byproduct of industrial processes. ProSep's Osorb Media Systems (OMS) deliver oil free water from the oil and gas industry's most challenging onshore and offshore water treatment applications. OMS not only remove challenging hydrocarbon contaminants from produced water, they do so with high efficiency over a long media life. Osorb uses a physical adsorption mechanism to remove hydrocarbons from water. Additionally, the unique structure of the media enables the adsorption isotherm to be reversed thus releasing the captured hydrocarbons from the media. The regeneration process is completed using a combination of physical and/or thermal processes that enable hydrocarbon recovery. Two pilot tests and one field test were completed demonstrating the OMS treatment and regeneration capabilities for both dispersed and dissolved oil removal. Three different regeneration methods were found to be effective. The first pilot test demonstrated over 99% removal of dissolved hydrocarbons throughout 28 water treatment and steam regeneration cycles. A second pilot test demonstrated a 2.6:1 (wt:wt) recovery of crude oil from Osorb while maintaining efficient water treatment. The field test had eight regenerations (five with steam and three with natural gas) completed and the media maintained 98% removal efficiency and averaged <1 mg/L of dispersed oil in the effluent water. OMS provide a proven technical solution along with the economic feasibility to treat dissolved and dispersed hydrocarbons from water which have proven challenging for the oil and gas industry.
Osorb ® is a silica-based, swellable glass which can effectively capture 96-99.9% of dissolved and dispersed organic compounds from produced water. The glass is reusable and hydrophobic, allowing it to repeatedly and reversibly absorb up to eight times its own mass in organics without absorbing any water. Osorb has been successfully used to treat samples of produced water from Wyoming, Canada, and the Gulf of Mexico Two ex situ pilot systems have been developed to utilize the technology. PW Unit #1 is a 246 L/min (65 gpm) treatment system that has completed multiple treatments of Clinton formation produced water and is being deployed for pilot testing in Wamsutter, WY. Skid Unit #1 is a capture-only, fixed bed system that can treat produced water at 8-23 L/min (2-6 gpm). Skid Unit #1 has been successfully fielded in southern Texas and is being deployed for pilot testing in the Marcellus Shale region.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.