The goal of oil operation companies is to be able to reuse their produced water, as disposal costs are expensive and guidelines/laws are different in different states and countries on produced water disposal. I agree that oil eating microbes have their place when it comes to a biological process for free oil; we have used these microbes as part of a treatment system before in this application. However, oil eating microbes are not advisable in produced water treatment, as they cannot handle all of the other contaminants/pollutants that are found in a produced water source to render it useful for reuse. Different technologies have there place in an integrated produced water treatment application. However, oil eating microbes being living organisms have issues with salinity, radioactivity, heavy metals, etc. rendering them ineffective in many of these particular cases.
Published by Nick Nicholas, App Eng/Technical Director at Genesis Water Technologies, Inc.
The goal of oil operation companies is to be able to reuse their produced water, as disposal costs are expensive and guidelines/laws are different in different states and countries on produced water disposal. I agree that oil eating microbes have their place when it comes to a biological process for free oil; we have used these microbes as part of a treatment system before in this application. However, oil eating microbes are not advisable in produced water treatment, as they cannot handle all of the other contaminants/pollutants that are found in a produced water source to render it useful for reuse. Different technologies have there place in an integrated produced water treatment application. However, oil eating microbes being living organisms have issues with salinity, radioactivity, heavy metals, etc. rendering them ineffective in many of these particular cases.