Department of Petroleum Engineering Dwight Look College of Engineering Texas A & M University Texas Engineering Experiment Station Global Petroleum Research Institute Petroleum Engineering

 

710 Richardson Building, 3116 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843-3116
Phone: (979) 845-2272 Fax: (979) 862-7407

Conversion of Oil Field Produced Brine
to Fresh Water


Recovery of Fresh Water Resources from Desalination of Brine Produced During Oil and Gas Production Operations

What's New

The A&M Desalination Program manages a number of projects determining what is involved in the desalination of oil field produced brine and the technical developments and regulatory changes needed to make the concept a commercial reality.
 To read an overview.

Three sections related to “conventional” produced water treatment can be reviewed here:

  1. the basics of produced water management
  2. the potential for desalination of produced brine - to make the resource more useful in areas of limited fresh water availability
  3. the potential beneficial uses of produced water for other than oil production operations.

Desalination of brine can also be used for agricultural applications. To view the proceedings of the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization - United Nations) Expert Consultation on Water Desalination for Agricultural Applications that was held at the FAO, Rome in April 2006, click here.

The program is beginning new studies in unconventional O&G resources. This is an emerging industry in Texas requiring large amounts of water, most of which cannot be recovered with present technology. This new source of energy from unconventional resources is expected to represent almost 50% of the natural gas produced in the United States in the next 25 years. Texas has the opportunity to be in the forefront of technology developed to achieve this by sustainable economic development. However, this new “face of the O&G industry” is even more dependent on water resources than traditional operations. It also tends to be more intrusive and can negatively impact sensitive environmental areas and local community areas if not integrated into managed processes for change that govern economic development in the state.

Those interested in the A&M program or in related research can contact Mr. David B Burnett, the coordinator of this project at:

David B. Burnett, Director of Technology GPRI
Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering
Texas A&M University
3116 TAMU
College Station, Texas 77843-3116
(o) 979 845 2274 (f) 979 862 1272
burnett@pe.tamu.edu
http://www.GPRI.org

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