Abstract
The focus in oil industry is to carry out exploration and exploitation to develop hydrocarbon prospects for the commercial production of oil and natural gas in an environmentally harmonious manner. While producing liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons, large amount of associated water is also produced. In majority of the cases in Upper Assam Basin the oil wells are producing with more than 85% water cut. This produced water has to be treated before discharging it in the environment as it contains harmful constituents in the form of both organics and inorganics. In this study, five samples have been taken for analysis with water content of 94%, 92%, 90%, 84% and 82% which shows the presence of oil and grease, TDS, TSS, DO, Ca, Fe, Na, K, Li, Mg, Mn, Pb and Zn. However the presence of Cr, Cu, Mo, and Ni have not been observed in the samples.
In the present global scenario, much awareness is observed in the environment sector. People are aware of the worst consequences of the environment hazards. Several factors leads to such consequences, industrial waste water being one of them. The direct discharge of the waste water from the industries causes harmful impact on flora and fauna. Therefore, this paper primarily focuses on the treatment processes of the industrial waste water and suggests some novel green approaches to be implemented by the industries for the safe disposal. Hence the samples under study have been treated with microfiltration, ultrafiltration and nanofiltration in the Hollow Fibre Membrane Module set up. The different test samples were collected from Oil fields of Upper Assam Basin. When the samples were treated with microfiltration it was found that some of the parameters like TDS, Turbidity, D.O, Salinity, Oil & Grease and some heavy metals were not within the limits set by the pollution control board of India. Therefore, the samples were further treated with Ultrafiltration. This treatment process resulted in the treatment of most of the pollutants. However turbidity, D.O., Salinity, Oil & Grease were still not within the range. The third treatment process of nanofiltration resulted in the complete eradication of pollutants and all the parameters were found to be within the specified range set by the pollution control board of India. Hence after completion of the three stages of treatment processes consecutively, the treated water may be safely disposed of without any harmful consequences.
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- AAS:
-
– Atomic Absorption Spectrometer
- BOD:
-
– Biochemical Oxygen Demand
- CO:
-
– Crude Oil
- COD:
-
– Chemical Oxygen Demand
- CPCB:
-
– Central Pollution Control Board
- DO:
-
– Dissolved Oxygen
- EOR:
-
– Enhanced Oil Recovery
- FP:
-
– Flame Photometer
- ICMR:
-
– Indian Council of Medical Research
- ICP-OES:
-
– Induced Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrophotometer
- MINAS:
-
– Minimum National Standard
- MF:
-
– Microfiltration
- MWCO:
-
– Molecular Weight Cut-off
- NF:
-
– Nanofiltration
- O&G:
-
– Oil and Grease
- PW:
-
– Produced Water
- TDS:
-
– Total Dissolved Solid
- TSS:
-
– Total Suspended Solid
- UF:
-
– Ultrafiltration
- US:
-
– United States
- UV:
-
– Ultra Violet
- WHO:
-
– World Health Organization
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Acknowledgement
We would like to acknowledge
• Indo-Tunisia Project no. DST/INT/TUNISIA/P-02/2017 entitled “Characterisation of oil field water to mitigate a major environmental hazard with recovery of usable water”.
• Indo-US Project F. No. 194-1/2009(IC) dated February, 2015 entitled “Foam-assisted CO2 Flooding for the depleted Reservoirs of Upper Assam Basin and in Candidate Reservoirs in Louisiana” of 21st century knowledge initiative program under University Grants Commission.
• DBT Twinning Project No. BT/485/NE/TBP/2013 entitled “Remediation of produced water from NE oil field by microbial and membrane intervention with modeling of an effluent unit for the recovery of usable water”.
• Dibrugarh University for the laboratory facilities
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Tapan, G.J., Subrata, G.B., Shilpi, S. (2019). A Green Approach for Oil Field Produced Waters of Upper Assam Basin. In: Ameen, H., Sorour, T. (eds) Sustainability Issues in Environmental Geotechnics. GeoMEast 2018. Sustainable Civil Infrastructures. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01929-7_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01929-7_11
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