Future water-treated high quality produced water

In order to dispose of or reinject the produced water within the environmental requirements, the oil in the water has to be removed. Many water deoiling equipment and technologies such as skim tank, IGF, CTour, Epcon-CFU, TORR etc are available in the industry now.

For any water deoiling technology, we have to look at the stability of oil-in-water emulsion (reverse emulsion). Water deoiling is to break the emulsion and to separate the oil from water. The emulsion stability may differ dramatically from different oilfields due to different reservoir characteristics, oil compositions, organics or chemicals used in the productions. It may take from a few minutes to a few months or more to separate oil from water for different emulsion. Oil sands SAGD water has very tight emulsion due to high asphaltene content and process chemicals, which bring challenges for SAGD water treatment.