Application
Oil & Gas Produced Water Treatment
We treat oil & gas produced waters to reduce waste volumes and disposal costs, minimize chemical usage, and recover more hydrocarbons.
Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) Produced Water Desalination
Oct 7th 2019
Saltworks completed two successful live oil field pilots that desalinated enhanced oil recovery (EOR) produced water. The objectives were to lower the clients’ polymer consumption costs and improve the quality of injection water in order to improve hydrocarbon recovery and lower operating cost. These objectives were met, with over 97% up-time. A video walk through of the pilot can be viewed here.
For further background, some EOR practitioners add polymer to increase the viscosity (“thickness”) of injection water in order to recover more oil. Water returns to the surface as produced water that is often more saline. Operators add expensive polymer back to this water to meet their injection viscosity goal. However, polymer consumption and costs increase dramatically with salinity. Polymer costs alone can be over $4-5/m3 injected. By desalinating the produced water prior to polymer addition, the following benefits can be realized:
- Reduce polymer consumption to meet the injection viscosity goal.
- Re-activate and recycle residual polymer in the produced water.
- Deliver an injection water with lower hardness, multivalent ions, and suspended solids, which can improve well performance to recover more hydrocarbon.
- Increase water recycling, resulting in less produced water disposal and freshwater withdrawal.
Download the Free Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) Pilot Results
About Saltworks
Saltworks Technologies is a leader in the development and delivery of solutions for industrial wastewater treatment and lithium refining. By working with customers to understand their unique challenges and focusing on continuous innovation, Saltworks’ solutions provide best-in-class performance and reliability. From its headquarters in Richmond, BC, Canada, Saltworks’ team designs, builds, and operates full-scale plants, and offers comprehensive onsite and offsite testing services with its fleet of mobile pilots.
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