| Abstract |
Saudi Aramco conducted comprehensive a field-testing program of produced water desalination technologies primarily targeted for produced water reuse as process/utility water and other indus-trial purposes with low total dissolved solids (TDS) (< 1,000 mg/L). The main driver for the pro-duced water re-use program was due to, firstly transition from linear model of economic growth, which is based on "take-make-dispose ", which is not sustainable to circular economy model sup-porting "closing the loop " of recovering value from produced water considered waste stream and secondly the conservation of Saudi Arabia's precious non-renewable ground water resources which are currently used for crude washing in desalting across Saudi Aramco. The program will reuse produced water in its oil operations, with potential ground water savings up to several bil-lion gallons annually post implementation and also enable circularity sustainably in its oil opera-tions. The objectives of the program were to evaluate the produced water desalination with min-imum 70% recovery factor as performance for two different configurations, that is, desalination of low salinity (TDS) produced water (< 15,000 mg/L) and high salinity (TDS) produced water (< 120,000 mg/L). A US patent 10,703,989 was also granted for the concept of produced water reuse. Produced water desalination testing was conducted at two different produced water streams in Arab Light crude oil at two different sites with gravities of 36-41 API, to determine the desali-nation performance and challenges with pre-treatment. Variation in feed conditions such as flow rate, temperature, inlet oil in water concentration and H2S in water, recovery factor were intro-duced to establish operating envelopes for the produced water desalination systems. The perfor-mance of two field produced water desalination technologies was evaluated by determining the salinity (TDS) and oil in water concentration at different operating conditions. Prior to piloting the laboratory bench test were conducted at lab scale to characterize the performance of produced water. The lab test helped identify the challenges during pilot testing and demonstrated that pro-duced water desalination for sustained flow conditions. This paper presents the key results of produced water re-use program along with two field tests as well as the path forward to deploy-ment of these technologies to unlock the value for produced water as resource in circular economy. The implications of this program success extend beyond Saudi Aramco. By increasing produced water reuse in the oil and gas processing, more groundwater will be available for non-industrial |
