Simulation of Reverse Osmosis Process for the Optimal Treatment of Produced and Blowdown Waters

Savannah Sakhai,* Ronald Alexander and Fernando V. Lima
Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, 26506

Presentation Category: Engineering (Poster Presentation)

Student’s Major: Chemical Engineering

Increased rates of oil and natural gas extraction have resulted in large amounts of high salinity waste known as produced water. However, current treatment techniques are often costly and inefficient. This study focuses on the synergistic combination of power plant boiler blowdown water containing mineral buildup and produced water to generate a sellable 10-lb brine by-product and decrease the economic and environmental impacts. Dow Dupont’s Water Application Value Engine (WAVE) is used to generate data sets for the formulation of a reverse osmosis (RO) model. Ratios of blowdown to produced waters fed to the RO unit are varied from 1:1 to 10:1, alongside RO parameters, such as the number of pressure vessels, water recovery, and flow factor in WAVE. The simulated RO data for a 1 stage design is imported into MATLAB for analysis and used to regress the parameters for the RO model. Simulation results indicate that increasing the number of pressure vessels allows for greater recovery and fewer stages which indicate a potential reduction in cost and increased efficiency in the overall system.

Funding:

Program/mechanism supporting research/creative efforts: a West Virginia SURE program