High Salinity Brine

In highly saline brines, which were collected from the Vassar Vertz Sand Unit, Pajme County, Oklahoma, diverse populations of anaerobic, heterotrophic bacteria were present. All strains grew in a mineral salts medium containing glucose, yeast extract, and casamino acids in the presence of NaCl concentrations of up to 20% by weight [177],... 

Scambelluri M., Piccardo G., Philippot P., Robbiano A., and Negretti L. (1997) High-salinity brines from recycled seawater in deeply subducted serpentiinite. Earth Planet. Set Lett. 148, 485-499. 

Several of the main tributaries to the Red River (Prairie Dog Town Fork of Red River, Pease River, and their tributaries) cross outcrops of the Blaine Formation and associated strata in the southeast corner of the Texas Panhandle (Fig. 2). This area, in the eastern part of the Palo Duro Basin, embraces much of Childress, Cottle, Hall and Motley counties, Texas (Fig. 6). Salt is present at depths greater than 150—250 m below the surface (Fig. 7) in the Flowerpot, Blaine and Dog Creek formations (these three units are sometimes called the Blaine of Texas in outcrops, and they are considered part of the San Andres Formation farther west in the deep subsurface of the Palo Duro Basin). Natural dissolution of these salts in the subsurface here and farther to the west produces low- to high-salinity brines that emerge in five separate areas characterized as salt plains, seeps, or springs. These five... 

Single-well chemical tracer tests performed by BP Alaska resulted in reduction in remaining oil saturation of 6 to 12% OOIP (McGuire et al., 2005). In a log-inject-log test, typically 0.1 to 0.15 pore volumes of high-salinity brine were injected first into the volume of interest to obtain the baseline residual oil saturation. This was followed by sequences of more dilute brine followed by high-salinity brine. Multiple log passes were conducted during each brine injection. At least three further passes were run to ensure that a stable saturation value had been established after injection of each type of brine. The results showed 0.25 to 0.5 reduction in residual oil saturation when waterflooding with low-salinity brine (Webb et al., 2004). 

Foams for Hydrocarbon-Miscible Flooding in Reservoirs Containing High-Salinity Brines... 

To have an iron compound that is soluble in water or highly saline brine. 

Figure 16 Hypoihciicai non Winxn type diapam in a ternary cut, in a quaternary like dodecylsuiraie, high salinity brine, aromatic oil. and n-buianol.

Membrane Distillation (MD) is a hybrid thermal-membrane process that could be applied in produced water volume reduction applications while simultaneously augmenting sustainable water production in Qatar. A consortium of ConocoPhillips - Global Water Sustainability Center (GWSC), Qatar University (QU) and Qatar Electricity Water Company (QEWC), was formed to assess the suitability of MD to treat high salinity brines from thermal desalination plants similar salinity levels could be found in produced water. The pilot scale results showed that MD could operate at 50% recovery and achieve a stable flux of 5 L/(m. h) at when treating thermal brine at 70,000 mg/L TDS. The effluent produced contained < 10 mg/L TDS. 

Keywords Desalination, Membrane Distillation, Produced Water, High Salinity Brine, Membranes... 

The primary objeetive of this research was to evaluate the performance of two different MD teehnologies at pilot scale in the treatment of brine from thermal desalination plants. This highly saline brine mimics the produced water streams from oil/gas operations. 

The vapor pressure of an aqueous solution depends on its salt concentration. Curves of the saturation pressure as a function of temperature are reported in Figure 9.10 for freshwater, seawater, and brine with a salinity of 0, 3.45%, and 28%, respectively [28]. Vapor pressure increases quickly with temperature, even though the trend is affected by salinity. Considering solutions at the same temperature, an extremely small vapor pressure difference can be appreciated between freshwater and seawater, but a wider gap can be observed with reference to a high-salinity brine. The reverse vapor compression technology exploits such a pressure difference. 

These considerations, however, do not apply to aqneous solutions beyond the above-stated limits of pH and concentrations and to nonaqueons and mixed aqueous-nonaqueous solutions, for which the nominal hydrogen ion activity, that is, the pH, is required. Sea water is one example of aqueous solutions for which special treatment is needed and highly saline brines is another one. Standard sea water of salinity 0.35% has an ionic strength of about 0.7 m and at 25°C has, because of this, pH=pH(dilute aqueous solu-tions)+0.076 as shown by Bates [12], provided that the cell is standardized with the same electrodes against the standard buffer used in dilute aqueous solutions described above. 

He did see considerable promise for polymers of HEC type and the biopolymers xanthan and scleroglucan were also found to be quite acceptable. However, Akstinat did not present very detailed stability results for the polymers in his study. Also, note that in the work of Akstinat, and in the work of Davison and Mentzer (1980), the objective was to find stable polymers for high-salinity brines (in the latter case based on sea water from the North Sea). It is well known, and it is discussed in detail below, that polyacrylamides are severely restricted in their performance in hard brines (i.e. brines containing divalent ions Ca ", Mg " ) (Zaitoun and Poitie, 1983 Moradi-Araghi and Doe, 1984). 

Polymer Viscosity/Concentration Relationships. A polysaccharide broth [PS(B)J, a polysaccharide powder [PS(P)J, a polyacrylamide liquid [PAA(L>], and a polyacrylamide powder [PAA(P>] were evaluated for the proposed polymer flood. Polysaccharide polymers gave substantially higher solution viscosities than polyacrylamide polymers (Fig. 2). The magnitude of the difference in viscosity between the two basic polymer types was at first surprising, in view of the relatively low-salinity brines used in the study. On the other hand, each of the brines had a relatively high ratio of divalent cations to total dissolved solids (TDS). Results from the laboratory have consistently shown that such brines act as if they were high-salinity brines. 

Additional pre-conditioning with fresh water was not undertaken. In all projects since 1979, a small slug of a less salt-sensitive 1ow-hydrolised polyacrylamide was injected to avoid adverse effects in the transitional zone of polyacrylamide/high salinity brine. 

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