Produced water (PW) management and reuse of PW has economic and environmental benefits compared to PW discharge. This research focuses on membrane separation efficiencies in adjusting the ionic composition of de-oiled PW and evaluating the possibility for smart water production from PW for enhanced oil recovery. Key characteristics of smart water for carbonate reservoir is increased concentration of divalent ions and depletion of monovalent ions.

Dual media is used for oil removal from PW. De-oiled PW is feed for Nanofiltration (NF) membranes for separation of barium and calcium ions. Combination of NF retentate with seawater (SW) as feed and NF permeate from PW is also considered. PW permeate is mixed with SW spiked with determining multivalent ions, sulfate or phosphate, which alter wettability of oil reservoirs.

Currently, smart water is produced by adding chemicals to fresh water or low total dissolved solids (TDS) water produced by reverse osmosis (RO) or flash distillation. Using de-oiled PW as feed to NF will reduce power consumption, footprint and chemicals. PW can be reinjected into reservoirs after removing scale-causing ions. By injecting low barium and calcium PW brines, the frequency of scale squeezes will decrease. Membrane performance is evaluated for flux and separation efficiencies of calcium and barium. Barium concentrations in synthetic PW is increased 20 times the original concentration in Tor Field in North Sea, for evaluating NF separation efficiency. Negligible amount of barium is present in NF permeate at pressures of 8-12 bars resulting in a permeate flow rate of 200 L/h for a membrane area of 2.6 m2.

Increased sulfate concentration in smart water enhances recovery by 40 % of original oil in place. However, BaSO4 scalingcan be initiated even with negligible barium concentration if high sulfate level is present in the injected brine. The novelty of this research resides in the use of non-precipitating phosphate replacing sulfate for smart water production, simultaneously decreasing barium concentration and scaling potential of PW. However, precipitation of calcium occurred in presence of high concentration of phosphate. Power consumed by NF membranes for smart water production is calculated at 0.37 kWh/m3.

Keywords:
enhanced recovery, concentration, composition, permeate, reservoir, waterflooding, Efficiency, smart water production, centrifugation, NF membrane
Subjects:
Improved and Enhanced Recovery, Waterflooding
Copyright 2016, Society of Petroleum Engineers
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