Recent advances on the treatment of oil fields produced water by adsorption and advanced oxidation processes

The handling and treatment of produced water (PW) generated during oil and gas extraction has continued to be a serious dilemma due to its large quantities and complex composition with variety of pollutants. In this review article, the treatment of PW using adsorption and advanced oxidation processes (AOP) and their integrated processes is analyzed and discussed, where the PW sources studied were both real and artificially contaminated PW. The role of different reaction parameters and their effect on the performance of these processes is critically evaluated. Furthermore, the existing research gaps were identified where it was found that there are insufficient studies on the integration of adsorption and advanced oxidation processes, but with the available literature, it was shown that integrated adsorption-advanced oxidation processes could be effectively used to treat produced water. It was deduced that further studies should target continuous columns (packed bed) rather than batch systems. Moreover, cost analysis and comparison should be carried out to see the feasibility of these systems. Also, innovative integrated technologies and efficient methods for the regeneration and reuse of these systems should be studied for their upscaling to industrial-scale applications.