Chemical Engineering May 2017 - 26

More efficient water treatment
Thanks to technology adaptations,
water treatment for applications
other than reuse has also become
more efficient and cost effective. For
example, in the oil-and-gas industry,
there are a number of problems
associated with controlling microorganisms
via chemicals. " Companies
in this sector need to use a form of
disinfection technology to avoid a
range of negative consequences
in the well, the equipment and the
piping systems that can be caused
by uncontrolled colonies of bacteria, "
explains Paul Hennessey, oil,
gas and energy business manager
with atg UV Technology (Lancashire,
U.K.; www.atguv.com). " For the last
30 or 40 years, that has been done
using chemicals. However, there are
not only transportation and storage
issues associated with using chemicals
in offshore applications, but also
issues related to chemical-induced
byproducts that have to be taken
down to undetectable limits before
wastewater can be discharged into
the ocean. This required extra equipment,
time and expense, " he says.
" So it became necessary to take a
holistic approach to avoid putting
something in on the front end that
has to be removed on the back end. "
The solution turned out to be ultraviolet
(UV) technology - an existing
technology with a new use (Figure 5).
" We use the same technology that's
been used in municipal drinking and
wastewater treatment for years, but
packaged it in a different way and
designed it to target oil field microorganisms, "
says Hennessey. " It is
chemical free, so there's no toxicity,
no need to transport, store or handle
chemicals and it creates no residual
byproducts that need treatment. "
Here, too, tweaks to an existing
technology have created a solution
that is not only more efficient,
but also less expensive. " Treatment
chemicals weren't inexpensive and to
properly treat these applications, you
needed a whole cocktail of chemicals
applied at different stages, " he says.
" So when you take the whole chemical
solution and treatment process
and compare it to UV, UV is much
less expensive. " He says one oil-andgas
major company used to spend
£200,000 ($251,000) a year on treatment
chemicals, but moved to UV
technology, with a consumable cost
of the UV system equipment and energy
to run it of £15,000 ($18,800) a
year. " That's a savings of £185,000
($232,200) a year when using UV as
opposed to traditional chemical treatment, "
says Hennessey.
Clearly, treatment technologies
have improved, allowing users to
see significant economic benefits. " A
lot of these technologies have been
available for decades, but they are
more advanced, more energy efficient
and cost effective than ever before, "
says Dow's Hermsen. " This provides
significant advancements in water
and wastewater treatment, recovery
and reuse and affords users better
sustainability and cost benefits, which
is what we're all striving for in a waterstrapped
environment. "
n
Joy LePree
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Chemical Engineering May 2017

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