Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

This project will aim to develop new, core technology for the treatment of produced water (PW) in offshore oil and gas applications. The current pplicable limit for hydrocarbons in PW discharges in Atlantic Canada is 40 mg/L as a monthlty. Offshore installations that commenced operations after August 2002 are required to meet a 30 mg/L monthly average of oil in discharged produced water. In contrast, oil concentration regulations for the instantaneous discharge of ship bilge water have long been established at 15 mg/L by the International Maritime Organization. The separation of dissolved oil in produced water is limited using conventional treatment technologies(e.g., hydrocyclones, gas flotation), and has been shown to contribute to its toxicity. Advanced treatment technologies to ensure regulations can be met from both a liquid effluent quality and solid waste management standpoint are required. The use of conventional coagulation (CC) through the additionof hydrolyzing metal salts has been investigated in the destabilisation of oil-in-water emulsions and has demonstrated to be critical to the removal of dissolved oils in downstream clarification processess such as dissolved air flotation (DAF).Chemical destabilization of oil-in-water emulsions can also beachieved through the use of electrocoagulation with in situ generation of coagulants by electrolyticoxidation of an appropriate anode material (e.g., iron or aluminum). The overall goal of the projectwill be to investigate a chemical-free treatment solution (e.g. electrocoagulation) that will provide enhanced removal of dissolved hydrocarbons for inline physical separation processes (e.g., EC-DAF) process design in terms of electrokinetic, coagulation, flotation and solid waste managementoperational requirements for the separation of dissolved oil from produced water generated by Atlantic Canada's expanding offshore petroleum industry.