ASSESSMENT OF SKIMMERS IN PRODUCED WATER TREATMENT ON A FLOATING PRODUCTION STORAGE AND OFFLOADING (FPSO) FACILITY

Authors: Igbinere S.A, *Ogbeide P.O

DOI Info: N/A

ABSTRACT

Pollution arising from produced water from the separation of oil and gas is one of the many environmental challenges experienced in the oil and gas industry. The inability of some separating vessel to adequately reduce the harmful materials in the produced water before discharging it has contributed to resent environmental hazards. The use of skimmers as a primary treatment vessel in the separation of oil droplets from produced water before discharge was assessed in this work. The skimmers which employ coalescence and gravity separation techniques are effective in water treatment when the outlet oil concentration is known. Optimization studies were carried out using skim plate (SP) packs placed inside skim tanks and comparing the performance to using just Skimmers. Water production rates were also varied to check the effect of a change in flow rate on the separation of the oil droplets and water. Results obtained showed that the overall efficiency was 95% separations of oil droplets when used with SP packs, with the SP packs separating two times the oil droplet size just using skim tank would. The effective length for separation to occur in a 24 in diameter separator was reduced from 16.93 ft (skimmer) to 4.23 ft (SP packs) which is a vital design parameter in offshore locations, and it also indicated that the vertical skimmers are also effective in handling solid particles.

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