Developing a Novel Method to Cool and Treat Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage Water
This project was funded in 2017 through ERA’s Joint call with Sustainable Development Technology Canada. While the funding relationship was ultimately terminated, the project aimed to test, design, construct and demonstrate a novel steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) water treatment system.
One of the largest sources of energy loss globally is the cooling of water for treatment and reuse in power and steam generation. SAGD requires large volumes of steam, and the resulting water is typically cooled prior to treatment for reuse. This cooling results in energy loss for a typical SAGD facility. To mitigate this issue, Purlucid Treatment Solutions created a treatment system that can operate at high temperature and pressure to reduce energy loss. The reduction in energy loss lowers greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity of heavy oil production as well as other steam-dependent industries such as power, paper and food production. The system utilizes “nanofiltration” with a highly charged Replaceable Skin Layer (RSL) membrane that replaces the treatment processes normally used for oil removal. By combining high temperature treatment with high efficiency filtration, this technology could reduce the water treatment GHG emissions per barrel of oil by 88 per cent.
Working Towards Commercial Deployment
Overall, this project aimed to prove the technical, commercial and environmental benefits of a treatment system that can remove silica, dissolved ions (e.g. iron, barium, calcium, magnesium, etc.), and dissolved oil suitable for use in Alberta’s oil industry. Prior to this project, Purlucid Treatment Solutions continuously developed the technology with pilots treating mine tailings, oilfield, refinery and petrochemical process waters, and several oil production wastewater and blowdown streams. This plan for this project included completing bench scale testing and design in the lab, followed by construction and field pilot/demonstration of the RSL. The objective was to achieve a viable commercial design suitable for operation under high temperature and pressure by the project completion date. While the funding relationship was ultimately terminated, the project yielded lessons applicable to future projects.
What’s next?
Since the funding relationship was terminated, ERA is not aware of any further work by Purlucid to develop this technology.