Greentech Lead America: Aquatech, a provider of water purification technology for industrial and infrastructure markets, has unveiled the HEVAP high efficiency evaporation process for treating produced water from oil sands thermal processes such as Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD).
“Increasingly, oil producers in Alberta are choosing to go with evaporation technology as the treatment method for reusing/recycling their produced water in thermal SAGD process because it offers a variety of benefits including higher water recovery rates (lower make-up / reduced blow down), smaller footprint, and easier operability,” said Alan R. Daza, P.Eng., vice president of Sales & Business Development for Aquatech’s Infrastructure and Major Projects division.
“However, managing scaling has been a challenge with evaporation technology. Aquatech’s HEVAP evaporative process addresses this issue as it has been engineered to operate in a scale-free environment while also providing other process advantages to oil producers,” Daza added.
The HEVAP evaporative process pre-conditions the feedwater by incorporating a softening step combined with additional conditioning of the feedwater prior to treatment by the evaporators. This process provides the evaporators with essentially a scale free environment in which to operate.
Other advantages, which help lower operating expense (OPEX) and life cycle costs (LCC), include high allowable concentration factors, increased recovery of high quality reusable water, no requirement for anti-scalants, no requirement for EDTA dosing and no requirement for mechanical cleaning
“The HEVAP evaporative process significantly increases the level of operational reliability and availability, both of which are important requirements in any SAGD facility. As a result, we believe that this type of system offers great potential in the oil sands market,” Daza added.
Recently Aquatech acquired Fluid Recovery Services (FRS) as part of its strategy to be a leader in oil & gas water management. Based in Creekside, PA, FRS operates a network of central, satellite and mobile facilities that deliver a menu of environmentally compliant and economically viable water management services.