Produced water treatment gravity separation

Induced Gas Flotation. Mechanically induced gas dotation (IGF) is employed extensively to remove suspended solids, oil, and other organic matter from oil-field and refinery wastewaters. Consequently, these IGF units are particularly suited to the treatment of oil-in-water or reverse emulsions. Such units generally follow gravity oil-water separation units such as FWKOs, gun barrels, and skim tanks in oil-field-produced water-treatment schemes, and also handle the oily water streams generated from all treaters in a specific produced-fiuid treatment plant. 

CANMET has a pilot-scaled emulsion-treatment plant (Figure B.l) available to industry for pilot-scaled investigation of heavy-oil-bitumen separation from oil-field-produced waters. This facility is designed to process emulsions at a throughput between 130 L/h (20 barrels per day) and 460 L/h (70 barrels per day) for raw bitumen-oil of API gravity between 8 and 15 (i.e., density between 1014 and 966 kg/m, respectively). 

Free oil is readily removed by mechanical gravity separation devices. Unstable oil-water emulsions can be broken mechanically or chemically. It is the stable oil-water emulsions which are most difficult and at the same time most. amenable to treatment by UF. Chemical coagulation/flotation or contract hauling are usually more expensive alternatives. Further, all chemical treatment methods produce a sludge in which the dirt, floe and trapped water remain in the oil phase. 

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