How UF Water Systems Help Oil & Gas Companies Reuse Their Water

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How UF Water Systems Help Oil & Gas Companies Reuse Their Water

In the oil and gas industry, water and wastewater treatment come into play in mining operations and refineries. UF water treatment systems are used in tertiary process applications in these industries to assist oil/gas operators and oil/gas refineries to obtain suitable water for produced water reuse for fracking operations or sustainable discharge.

Drilling for oil happens both on and off-shore. The extraction process involves drilling a hole beneath the surface of the earth (the seafloor for offshore wells) down into the oil reservoir zone of the earth's crust. Initially, the pressure built up in the oil reservoir is enough to force it up naturally for a time. This extracts up to 15% of the oil in the well. Following that, the pressure below is no longer sufficient and therefore, pressure is induced by injecting fluids or gases to continue forcing the oil out of the wellhead. Up to 35 to 45 % of the oil has now been recovered. Another 10 to 15 % of the oil is extracted in a tertiary stage that uses steam to heat the oil and reduce its viscosity, making it more mobile.

After the crude oil has been extracted from the earth, it now needs to be refined into the products that humans can use. The science behind the refinery process is a bit complex, but it boils down to a multi-step distillation process. This process separates the oil into its component parts by heating it. Each different component has a different boiling point, and they separate out within the distillation column with the lowest boiling points at the top and the highest at the bottom. The components are drawn out from their layers and sent off for further refinement.

Both extraction and refinement processes use water in some capacity. The wastewater produced from refineries and the produced water brought up from oil wells contains varying levels of oils, grease, salts, heavy metals and hydrocarbons among other contaminants. In the effort of water treatment for meeting environmental discharge regulations or standards for wastewater reuse, effective and sustainable treatment technologies are required.

Specialized UF water treatment systems have proven many times to be a valuable tertiary process in oil and gas water treatment applications. There are two applications in particular that use these UF water systems quite frequently: produced water treatment and refinery cooling tower feedwater treatment. I will discuss these applications in just a moment.

First, let’s identify and review a few of the commonly seen pollutants in produced water and refinery wastewater...

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https://genesiswatertech.com/blog-post/how-has-uf-water-systems-helped-oil-gas-companies-to-reuse-their-water/

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