Green chemicals opportunity for water treatment process steam EOR: Case study

The X Field steam-injection project in Sultanate of Oman is the world's first full-field steam-injection project based on thermally assisted gas/oil gravity drainage (TAGOGD) in a fractured carbonate field. The project scope includes drilling some wells and installing facilities to treat water and generate around 18,000 tonnes per day of steam, the plant targeted to be started up in around year 2010. Additional facilities will be built to process the incremental oil and gas produced at the field as well as disposing of excess produced water in deep reservoirs. The X field, which was discovered around year 1970 contains a moderately viscous crude in rock that is rather impervious to its flow. The EOR recovery process being applied-TAGOGD-is based on injecting steam into the formation's fractures to heat the low-permeability oil-bearing rock. As the rock is heated, gas is liberated and the viscosity of the oil is reduced, flowing much more easily into the fractures under the action of gravity. This feature of the project allows the number of wells, and hence development costs, to be kept to a minimum. The paper explains the selection of green chemicals as an opportunity for water treatment facilities of Steam EOR process. Green chemicals are a class of compounds that are biodegradable and less toxic and the selection started with facilities expectation. For most water treatment and boiler applications, the majority of the chemical compounds used tend to be inorganic and non-biodegradable. This is primarily because facilities needs a strongly alkaline source to prevent corrosion. As a result, most of the chemicals have a pH of 8.5 or above depending upon inhibition. In order to applied green chemicals, we need to develop a matrix and inspect industrial applicable green chemicals based on MSDS, technical expectation and OPEX. Toxicity and biodegradability are listed on the sheets. One final thing is the attempt to be green is more of an attitude and application of existing technology.