(142a) Techno-Economic Analysis of Produced Water Treatment Trains for Beneficial Reuse

Produced water is an abundant byproduct of oil and natural gas extraction. It exists in subsurface formations alongside oil and natural gas and contains many inorganic and organic contaminants. As such, produced water must be treated and purified before it can be used for most other applications. Many of the oil- and natural gas-rich regions of the world, such as the Permian Basin and regions of the Middle East, also face pressing water scarcity. Furthermore, produced water is often rich in minerals that are essential to the production of clean energy, such as lithium, barium, and magnesium. Finally, reinjection of produced water is a common method for disposal, but often leads to increased seismic activity. Treatment processes that are capable of purifying produced water into a usable state for irrigation of non-food crops, data center cooling, and firefighting are of great interest. To this end, computer-based optimization, simulation, and techno-economic analysis tools are employed to evaluate and identify treatment trains that will provide the best performance at a reasonable cost. The treatment trains evaluated include membrane distillation and osmotically assisted reverse osmosis, with nanofiltration and ion exchange as pretreatments. These results are compared with baseline mechanical vapor compression results produced in prior work.