Gas Treatment Produced Water Reuse

Abstract Industrial produced wastewater management has been a challenging objective in the Oil and Gas Industry, and the adoption of systems to reuse it is essential to promote the circular economy principles. Saudi Aramco, adapted an integrated system to collect, treat, and reuse the facility-wide produced water to eliminate directing it to evaporation ponds, or outside the facility to waste management entities. Produced water, in gas plants, is usually formed in three processes: separating wells’ sour water from monoethyl-glycol, knocking out sour water during gas sweetening, and during acid gas handling and cooling. The produced water is instantly directed to sour water treatment to remove the hydrogen sulfide, and finally to a biological wastewater treatment plant. The wastewater treatment plant's objective is to reducing the total organic compound (TOC) content in the water through bacterial activity, and filtration. Once the TOC is minimized to the process requirement, it is reused within the plant as a cooling tower make-up water. It is both an environmental and an economical driven adoption. Produced wastewater is reused to reduce plant's purchased water quantity significantly, and it ultimately leads to minimize the facility's purchased fresh water quantity especially during the summer season where the evaporation rate is high. Also, this leads to a reduction of CO2 footprint as a result of avoided purchased water desalination (scope 2 carbon emission). This initiative also supports the circular economy principles by conserving the plant's water, and minimizing the demand on fresh products.