In Search of Cheap, Fast Ways To Detect Water Troubles
Authors: Jacobs Trent , Rassenfoss Stephen , Whitfield Stephen 
Published: January 2017

In Search of Cheap, Fast Ways To Detect Water Troubles

Trent Jacobs and Stephen Rassenfoss, JPT Writers

Treating produced water to control bacteria is like weeding a garden. It addresses the problem that is not going away.

Regular field testing shows water quality is highly variable. The biological and chemical makeup of a tank of produced water is complex and can quickly change as water from other sources is added and microbes rapidly multiply.

“In the Permian Basin, I went out to wells that have been recently fractured and within 2 months they are already soured. It was back-traced to poor water quality. That happens more often than you think it does,” said David Burnett, a research scientist at the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES).

One of the TEES projects is seeking practical, cheap, reliable, and quick testing options for microbes and chemicals, and seeing if those tests also work in the hands of a worker in the field. The goal is to convince operators that they need to test often and can rely on those results to manage their operations because performing a test that costs USD 10 or less could save USD 500,000 on a workover.

TEES’ interest coincides with a spate of new options on the market for biological and chemical monitoring of oilfield water.

 

New Field Testing Device for Water Competes With Laboratory Methods

Trent Jacobs, JPT Senior Technology Writer

Analyzing the properties of produced water is a difficult process because of the extreme levels of suspended and dissolved particulates contained in it, and a chemistry profile that is in constant flux.

But the transition from using fresh water to recycling produced and flowback water for hydraulic fracturing in North America has driven the need to improve how oilfield water sources are analyzed.

Industry research shows that water chemistry can affect production behavior, and compared with fresh water, produced and flowback fluids introduce many more chemical constituents to the equation.

 

TOC Analysis Gains Acceptance as a Standard for Organics Testing

Stephen Whitfield, Staff Writer

The presence of excessive levels of organic components in produced water can lead to costly problems for operators ranging from clogged membranes in treatment facilities to environmental issues and compliance with government permits. Having adequate technologies and processes for measuring organics may be a solid economic strategy for operators.

Johnny Robinson, an organics monitoring process sales manager at GE, spoke about the importance of analyzing and controlling the levels of total organic carbon (TOC) in waste water during a short course on water management held by the Global Petroleum Research Institute at Texas A&M University.

Robinson outlined three metrics for monitoring organics in water: biological oxygen demand (BOD), the quantity of oxygen used by microorganisms in the oxidation of organic matter; chemical oxygen demand (COD), the amount of oxygen required to oxidize soluble and particulate organic matter in water; and TOC, the amount of carbon found in an organic compound.