The Petroleum industry is one of Ronningen-Petter's areas of expertise. Therefore, I feel that this paper--written by one of our employees, Craig Annable, and published by Hydrocarbon Engineering--would be of interest to you. Due to its length, this will be posted in five different articles.

• Section 1: Introduction
• Section 2: Oilfield Production Site
• Section 3: Cooling and Amine Systems
• Section 4: Selecting the Right Filter
• Section 5: Disposable and Cleanable Filter Media

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Section 2: Oilfield Production Site

Water is used for down hole injection, process cooling, steam generation, dilution fluids, gas sweetening reactions, quench operations, heat transfer, and as a universal hydrophilic solvent.

Each of these applications is improved with cleaner water. The cost of dirty water is seen in the short term as process slowdowns, and in the long term as equipment plugging, under deposit corrosion, fouled resin, and equipment erosion.

A few specific treatment solutions are discussed in more detail.

At the production site, water is often injected into the producing formation to help extract oil. This water is generally recycled water that was previously pumped out of the formation with the oil.

The water is separated from the oil and prepared for re-injection. This water contains scale and iron particles. Solids in the injection water degrade the high pressure equipment, can cause line corrosion and plugging, and most significantly plug the formation.

Alternatively, filtration of water at the injection site keeps formation flow through high, maintaining secondary recovery.

Clean water also extends the life of high-pressure injection pumps and other critical system equipment. Ultimately, it reduces corrosion in the distribution lines, positively affecting the overall system.

To optimize equipment protection, throughput, and system performance; the injection water should be filtered to 10 µ to protect the surface equipment. Then, it should be filtered again prior to the injection wellhead.

Prior to being sent to the wells, water is often filtered through a large sand filter. This works reasonable well, but requires a large footprint.

High air and water volumes are required to backwash and maintain the media. As an alternative barrier, filtration can eliminate the need for air scrubbing, greatly reduce the backwash volume, and it requires little maintenance.

A traditional and still viable solution for filtration of injection water is cartridge filtration. Absolute rated media guarantees 99.98% filtration to levels as low as 0.5 µ.

For continuous throughput without the need to change out bags or cartridges, tubular filter systems offer an alternative with cleanable, reusable media at retentions very close to those available with cartridge systems.

In fact, 98% efficiency down to 2µ can be achieved with some models. This type of filter system eliminates media cost, disposal cost and operator time spent changing cartridges.

The next article (section 3) will examine Cooling Systems, and how they can affect system instrumentation and efficiency.

by Ask Filter Man

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