Treatment of Wastewater from Oil and Gas Industry

Impacts, Challenges and Solutions

Source & Impacts of Wastewater from Oil & Gas Industry

Fossil fuels like oil and natural gas have powered the global economy for over a century and still meet approximately 80 percent of worldwide energy demand

The oil and gas industry generates huge amounts of wastewater, and this volume continues to rise significantly. Currently, most of this wastewater is disposed of through underground injection, where the water can no longer be accessed or used. Underground injection is reaching its limits in some areas, requiring new approaches to handle wastewater from oil and gas operations. Several steps would be necessary to treat and renew this wastewater for other purposes. The primary activities of the oil and gas industry are crude oil and natural gas extraction, transformation of crude oil into its components, and energy production from petroleum and natural gas derivatives. Wastewater from the oil and gas industry can differ in each process, but it has some basic characteristics: high content of fats, oils and hydrocarbons, dissolved organic matter, petroleum residues, high suspended solids, high viscosity, dissolved salts and heavy metals. The components that need to be removed most effectively are oils, greases, hydrocarbons, suspended solids and dissolved organic matter.

Petroleum Refinery Wastewater Treatment

Produced Water from Oil/Gas Industry & Electrochemical Advanced Oxidation

Treating oily wastewater requires integrated yet adaptable solution that combines innovative technologies with highly efficient application with potential for optimization.

Electrochemical Oxidation Process

While several methods have been explored to treat produced water, physicochemical and bioremediation techniques have operational issues like generating toxic gases, transferring pollutants to other phases, producing sludge requiring large land areas, and inability to destroy stubborn compounds.
In contrast, electrochemical methods have proven to be an efficient and viable alternative for treating various industrial wastewaters, including refinery wastewater. This is due to electrochemistry’s unique ability to oxidize or reduce contaminants in water at precise locations near electrodes. Electrochemical treatment also has many benefits, such as wide applicability, simple equipment easy operation, no chemical use, lower temperature needs, and no sludge formation.

Among electrochemical methods, anodic oxidation directly destroys organic pollutants by reacting them with hydroxyl radicals formed at the anode surface during water oxidation. Using special anodes for anodic oxidation to remediate wastewater has attracted much attention.

Hydroxyl radicals is one of the most powerful oxidizing agents

Diamond-based non-active anodes, like Boron Doped Diamond (BDD) anodes, have valuable properties including an inert surface, high corrosion resistance, and an extremely wide potential range in water. BDD anodes have great potential for electrochemically treating wastewater because of their extraordinary chemical stability and ability to mineralize many stubborn organic compounds. BDD anodes can also produce hydroxyl radicals, an extremely powerful oxidant. No previous work has demonstrated electrochemically treating petroleum wastewater using BDD anodes. The objective here is to present case studies of using anodic oxidation with BDD anodes to remove petroleum hydrocarbons, phenol, ammonia, and other contaminants from produced water.