ALL ABOUT OIL & GAS TREATMENT SYSTEM Produced Water

The first step in choosing a water treating system is to characterize the influent water streams. It is necessary to know both the oil concentration in this stream and the particle size distribution associated with this concentration. This is best determined from field samples and laboratory data. Various attempts have been made to develop design procedures to determine oil concentration in water outlets from properly designed freewater knockouts and treaters. A conservative assumption would be that the water contains less than 1,000 to 2,000 mg/1 of dispersed oil. It is possible to theoretically trace the particle size distribution up the tubing, through the choke, flowlines, manifolds and production equipment into the free-water knockout using equations presented in previous sections. However, many of the parameters needed to solve these equations, especially those involving coalescence, are unknown. Because of the dispersion through the water dump valve, the oil size distribution at the outlet of a free-water knockout or heater treater is not a significant design parameter. From the dispersion theory it can be shown that after passing through the dump valve a maximum droplet diameter on the order of 10 to 50 microns will exist no matter what the droplet size distribution was upstream of this valve. If there were sufficient time for coalescence to occur in the piping downstream of the dump valve, then the maximum droplet diameter would be defined by Equation 7-2 prior to the water entering the first vessel in the water treating system. The solution of this equation requires the determination of surface tension. The surface tension of an oil droplet in a water continuous phase is normally between 1 and 50 dynes/cm. It is not possible to predict the value without actual laboratory measurements in the produced water. Small amounts of impurities in the produced water can lower the surface tension significantly from what might be measured in synthetic water. In addition, as these impurities change with time, so will the surface tension. In the absence of data it is recommended that a maximum diameter of between 250 and 500 microns be used for design. It is clear that there will be distribution of droplet sizes from zero to the maximum size, and this distribution will depend upon parameters unknown at the time of initial design. Experimental data indicate that a conservative assumption for design would be to characterize the distribution by a straight line as shown in Figure 7-19.

Water Treating System

In producing operations it is often necessary to handle wastewater that may include water produced with crude oil, rain water, and washdown water. The water must be separated from the crude oil and disposed of in a manner that does not violate established environmental regulations. In offshore areas where discharge to the sea is allowed, the governing regulatory body specifies the maximum hydrocarbon content in the water that may be discharged overboard. The range is currently 15 mg/1 to 50 mg/1 depending on the specific location. In most onshore locations the water cannot be disposed of on the surface, due to possible salt contamination, and must be injected into an acceptable disposal formation or disposed of by evaporation. In either case it will probably be necessary to treat the produced water to lower its hydrocarbon content below that normally obtained from free-water knockouts and oil treaters. The purpose of this article is to present the engineer with a procedure for selecting the appropriate type of equipment for treating oil from produced water and to provide the theoretical equations and empirical rules necessary to size the equipment. When this design procedure is followed, the engineer will be able to develop a process flowsheet, determine equipment sizes, and evaluate vendor proposals for any wastewater treating system.

Water Treating Gravity Separation

Most commonly used water treating equipment items rely on the forces of gravity to separate the oil droplets from the water continuous phase. The oil droplets, being lighter than the volume of water they displace, have a buoyant force exerted upon them. This is resisted by a drag force caused by their vertical movement through the water. When the two forces are equal, a constant velocity is reached, which can be computed from Stokes Law as:

Several conclusions can be drawn from this simple equation: 1. The larger the size of an oil droplet, the larger the square of its diameter, and, thus, the greater its vertical velocity. That is, the bigger the droplet size, the less time it takes for the droplet to rise to a collection surface and thus the easier it is to treat the water. 2. The greater the difference in density between the oil droplet and the water phase, the greater the vertical velocity. That is, the lighter the crude, the easier it is to treat the water. 3. The higher the temperature, the lower the viscosity of the water, and thus the greater the vertical velocity. That is, it is easier to treat the water at high temperatures than at low temperatures.

Oil Treating System

Removing water from crude oil often requires additional processing beyond gravitational separation. In selecting a treating system, several factors should be considered to determine the most desirable methods of treating the crude oil to contract requirements. Some of these factors are: 1. Tightness of the emulsion. 2. Specific gravity of the oil and produced water. 3. Corrosiveness of the crude oil, produced water, and casinghead gas. 4. Scaling tendencies of the produced water. 5. Quantity of fluid to be treated and percent water in the fluid. 6. Paraffin-forming tendencies of the crude oil. 7. Desirable operating pressures for equipment. 8. Availability of a sales outlet and value of the casinghead gas produced. A common method for separating this water-in-oil emulsion is to heat the stream. Increasing the temperature of the two immiscible liquidsdeactivates the emulsifying agent, allowing the dispersed water droplets to collide. As the droplets collide they grow in size and begin to settle. If designed properly, the water will settle to the bottom of the treating vessel due to differences in specific gravity. The process of coalescence requires that the water droplets have adequate time to contact each other. It also assumes that the buoyant forces on the coalesced droplets are sufficient to enable these droplets to settle to the bottom of the treating vessel. Consequently, design considerations should necessarily include temperature, time, viscous properties of oil that inhibit settling, and the physical dimensions of the vessel, which determine the velocity at which settling must occur.

Laboratory analysis, in conjunction with field experience, should be the basis for specifying the configuration of treating vessels. The purpose of this chapter is to present a rational alternative for those instances when laboratory data do not exist or, if it is desirable, to extrapolate field experience.

Water Treating Dispersion

An oscillating droplet of oil becomes unstable when the kinetic energy is sufficient to make up for the difference in the surface energy between the single droplet and the two smaller droplets formed from it. At the same time that this process is occurring, the motion of the smaller oil particles is causing coalescence to occur. Therefore, it should be possible to define statistically a maximum droplet size for a given energy input per unit mass and time at which the rate of coalescence equals the rate of dispersion. One relationship for the maximum particle size that can exist at equilibrium was proposed by Hinze as follows:

It can be seen that the greater the pressure drop and thus the shear forces that the fluid experiences in a given period of time while flowing through the treating system, the smaller the maximum oil droplet diameter will be. That is, large pressure drops that occur in small distances through chokes, control valves, desanders, etc., result in smaller droplets. The dispersion process is theoretically not instantaneous. However, it appears from field experience to occur very rapidly. For design purposes, it could be assumed that whenever large pressure drops occur, all droplets larger than dmax will instantaneously disperse. This is, of course, a conservative approximation.

Water Treating Coalescence

The process of coalescence in water treating systems is more time dependent than the process of dispersion. In dispersions of two immiscible liquids, immediate coalescence seldom occurs when two droplets collide. If the droplet pair is exposed to turbulent pressure fluctuations, and the kinetic energy of the oscillations induced in the droplet pair is larger than the energy of adhesion between them, the contact will be broken before coalescence is completed.

It has been shown in the previous chapter that the time to grow a droplet size due to coalescence in a gravity settler is proportional to the diameter of the droplet to some power greater than three and inversely proportional to the concentration of the oil phase. From this it can be concluded that after an initial period of coalescence in a settler, additional retention time has a rapidly diminishing ability to cause coalescence and to capture oil droplets.