Aeration improves water remediation

摘要

Increasing demand for oil is pushing the industry to produce greater amounts of hydrocarbons. Advances in water treatment technologies will allow increased oil production without the liability of large volumes of contaminated water. Enhanced recovery methods, which include water flood in conventional oil reservoirs, steam assisted gravity drainage, and cyclic steam stimulation in oil sands, all require that massive amounts of fresh water be injected into reservoirs. The result is that injected water produced with the oil is contaminated and must undergo remediation. The goal of most producers is to remove waste water from the site and process it to make it potable and usable for agriculture irrigation. Existing water remediation and cleansing technologies include initial treaters - holding tanks that let gravity do the work of separating out contaminants, followed by electrostatic systems and the use of chemicals or heat - all of which use a lot of energy. These methods also leave approximately 0.5% to 3% of residual oil in the separated water. That water must be disposed of, an objective that is frequendy accomplished by injecting the water back into the reservoir or leaving it on the surface in toxic tailing ponds.