Produced water, whether it comes from primary production, water flood, steam flood, or enhanced oil recovery, contains hydrocarbons that are dissolved in the water and hydrocarbons that are dispersed as droplets. According to regulations in the United States, as well as many other countries in the world, both the dissolved and the dispersed hydrocarbons must be removed before produced water can be surface discharged. The design of most oil and gas facilities includes units such as settling vessels and tanks, hydrocyclones, and flotation all of which are fairly effective at removing dispersed oil. However, the industry struggles to understand let alone remove water soluble organics.
This webinar will start with the fundamentals of water soluble organics: where they come from, what they are, their properties, their distribution around the world, and typical concentrations. Chemical and mechanical methods for their removal will be reviewed. Finally, some recently discovered characteristics of water soluble organics will be presented which provide both a means of classifying the type of organics and a method to determine the optimal treatment strategy.
Dr. John Walsh has recently joined Cetco as Director of Technical Water Treatment. He has nearly thirty years experience in water treatment having worked for Shell for over twenty years, and Westvaco Paper Company prior to Shell.
At Shell, he was the Global Subject Matter Expert for Upstream Water Treatment. In that role, he provided troubleshooting, operational, design and water management support in all aspects of upstream water treatment including: produced water, water flood, conventional and unconventional hydraulic fracturing, polymer flood, seawater desalination, and evaporation technologies for steam flooding. He has provided first hand onsite troubleshooting support in 14 countries around the world.
He is an associate editor of Oil and Gas Facilities magazine. He recently served on the Board of Directors of SPE. He is currently on the Board of Directors of the Produced Water Society.