Avaliação de metodologia combinada com uso de tensoativos e polieletrólitos para tratamento de água produzida

Abstract

The ever-greater development of alternative energy sources in substitution to petroleum-derived fuels has forced this industry to optimize its costs, while keeping health, insurance and environment focus. Due to the high produced water rates in mature onshore fields, the reduction of chemicals while treating this residue provides important financial savings perspective to oil industry. The present study aims to evaluate the synergistic effect of the combined use of a conventional tanine based polyelectrolyte in association with a coconut oil derived surfactant, to better use locally available resources for produced water treatment. Due to produced water intrinsic instability, a method for producing stable oil in water emulsion (with ~50 mg/L of grease and oil content) was developed. Samples were subject molecular absorption analysis in visible region and compared to a standard built with solvent and oil. Chemical treatment’s efficiency were evaluated on jar-tests with controlled stirring basis’. Treatment with only polyelectrolyte presented results in good agreement with literature, where 40 mg/L were able to withdraw 81 and 85% of the oil content of the produced water residue, fully meeting law requirements. Treatment using only the coconut oil surfactant was able to achieve this level of treatment only with 200 mg/L of active matter, providing 86% efficiency. Combined polyelectrolyte and surfactant treatment managed to produce greater efficiency than isolated methods (92%) by using 20 mg/L of the polyelectrolyte and 100 mg/L of the surfactant. It was verified the dependency between tested variables (concentration and efficiency) by the use of deviation analysis (F-test) with 95% confidence. Therefore, it was possible to observe that the combined use of both products could lead to financial savings in produced water treatment while maintaining process sustainability and providing economic use for locally available low cost surfactants.