Background
Oilfield produced water is the largest volume waste stream associated with oil and gas production. Increasingly stringent environmental regulations require extensive treatment of produced water before disposal. Currently, treatment and disposal of oilfield wastewater alone costs the global oil and gas industry more than USD 40 billion annually. Apart from the high CAPEX investment required to setup an efficient treatment system, the main OPEX is associated with the cost of maintenance, energy and chemicals. Ghana is blessed with abundant biomass resources, clay deposits and other raw materials that can be used as feedstock to produce commercial quantities of sustainable oilfield materials. However, currently, almost all the major materials, chemicals and agents used in oilfield wastewater treatment in Ghana are imported. The SMOWT project will design, test, standardize and commercialize the production of at least two sustainable materials for oilfield wastewater treatment in Ghana.
Objectives
- To design and produce standard sustainable materials that can be readily commercialized for oilfield wastewater treatment in Ghana through industry-academia collaborative research and development projects.
- To conduct feasibility studies of the produced materials through field pilot tests.
Proposed Method
- Identification and selection of treatment materials and chemicals that are mostly imported for oilfield wastewater treatment
- Design of a robust protocol to synthesize, produce and standardize the identified materials from locally available feedstock
- Mobilization and characterization of feedstock
- Synthesis and optimization of the materials or chemicals
- Characterization, testing and standardization of the prepared materials
- Piloting of the standardized materials