Filtration of Oilfield Produced Waters
Authors: Wallace James T. 
Published: December 2007

This paper was prepared for the Symposium on the Handling of Oilfield Waters of the Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME, to be held in Los Angeles, Calif., Dec. 4–5, 1972. Permission to copy is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words. Illustrations may not be copied. The abstract should contain conspicuous acknowledgment of where and by whom the paper is presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in the JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or the SOCIETY OF publication in the JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or the SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is usually granted upon request to the Editor PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is usually granted upon request to the Editor of the appropriate journal provided agreement to give proper credit is made.

Discussion of this paper is invited. Three copies of any discussion should be sent to the Society of Petroleum Engineers office. Such discussion may be presented at the above meeting and, with the paper, may be considered for publication in one of the two SPE magazines.

The CITY OF LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA was recently awarded first prize in a national environmental competition for pioneering a program of getting the various field operators program of getting the various field operators to build filtration systems to handle produced oil field brinewater, and then to reinject the filtered wastewater back underground, serving the dual purpose of eliminating a potential pollution problem and helping to curb pollution problem and helping to curb subsidence.

The produced water may contain as much as 25 to 50 ppm of oily residue and an equal quantity of suspended solids, but it is also oxygen deficient. The oily residue and solids have little effect on marine life, but the oxygen deficiency would be detrimental. The application of deep bed dual media filters as the final step before injection made the program economically feasible by removing the program economically feasible by removing the majority of the contaminants and making injection into the aquifers a reality.

TEXT

Permanent media pressure filters and diatomaceous earth filters have been used in the past on brine produced waters with questionable degrees of success. The DELAVAL Con, denser and Filter Division of DELAVAL Turbine Inc. recognized many years ago the requirement for reliable high volume filtration of oily wastewaters. Successful pilot tests on oily waters using the deep bed dual media UHR Filter convinced us that the filter could continuously provide a good effluent on produced water. provide a good effluent on produced water. Accordingly, we entered into a cooperative test program with one of the large producers in the Wilmington Field at Long Beach, California. Satisfactory bench tests were conducted as far back as November, 1967.

Pilot tests were then conducted in two major phases. The first phase evaluated the merits of upflow filtration during the summer of 1968. The second phase evaluated dual media downflow filtration early in 1969. The objectives in the two test phases were to:determine the performance of the UHR Filter when operating with flotation cell effluent on oil field produced brine water;define the optimum operating conditions for a full scale filter plant; anddemonstrate the effectiveness of the backwash procedure over a reasonably long period of time.

A summary comparison of upflow versus downflow is shown in Figure No. 1.