Sustainable Produced Water Treatment Using Micellar-Enhanced Ultrafiltration

The demand for quality water for the purpose of drinking, irrigation and industrial use has been on a constant increase worldwide. Recently, the world is of more concerns about water treatment and reuse therefore, more restricted regulations and standard have been established to ensure the use of a proper, more effective and useful wastewater treatment methods to treat wastewater from different chemical industries. Produced water is the largest waste stream generated during the process of oil and gas extraction. Micellar-enhanced ultrafiltration (MEUF) is known as a powerful separation process developed recently to remove various pollutants such as heavy metals, toxic organic materials and organic and inorganic pollutants from aqueous phase. In this study the effect of different parameters such as, operating pressure and temperature, type of surfactants, surfactant concentration, pH of the solution, membrane type and its pore size as well as the presence of some additives, on the performance of the MEUF process will be evaluated. Experiments will involve oil-produced water from one of the fields in Oman and the treated water will be fully characterized and tested for possible irrigation purposes. The successful application of such treatment technology will open the door for solving a major environmental concern as well as the profitable energy efficient recycling of water resources.