May 28, 2024 Adaptive Process Solutions
Produced water treatment specialist, Adaptive Process Solutions (APS), has completed highly successful field trials of its new Microbubble Infusion Unit (MiFU) technology, reducing oil-in-water (OiW) levels by almost a fifth in combination with synergistic production chemicals.
The full-scale trials, carried out on a floating production storage and offloading vessel (FPSO) in the North Sea, lasted for six months. The trials delivered the positive results the client was looking for, confirming that the new technology will bring significant improvements to a wide range of industries facing increasing levels of OiW in produced water.
As with other operators, produced water separation had been a long-standing challenge for this operator. Several different technologies were tried out before APS proposed its patented MiFU, which had already shown impressive results in preliminary offshore laboratory tests.
Designed as a retrofittable add-on to existing water treatment systems, MiFU is configured to meet an asset’s specific conditions and fluid chemical composition, with before-and-after results confirming a potential five-fold improvement in OiW results.
APS managing director Paul McAllister said MiFU was developed to address an industry-wide problem faced by operators: efficiently and effectively purifying produced water and ensuring it meets strict regulatory standards before being discharged into the sea.
“This is a huge challenge for operators,” he says. The North Sea is a mature oil and gas region, and the industry discharges millions of tonnes of water into the ocean every year. The situation is made worse by existing separation systems that are designed to treat small amounts of produced water, resulting in bottlenecks that slow production.
“Our technology can also avoid the challenges FPSO operators face when rough seas mean they can no longer rely on additional 'slop tank' isolation as an alternative to meet demand. In both cases, MiFU improves overall environmental performance and productivity.”
“This successful field trial is the culmination of four years of research and development and MiFU is a world first. I am incredibly proud of my management and staff. We are an Aberdeen-grown company and have now launched a world-leading environmental technology.”
MiFU uses injected microbubbles that attach to very fine particles of oil and fine solids in produced water, where they can be easily removed by the asset's existing separation processes. While the underlying technology is already proven, MiFU is unique in that it implements a patented multi-pass process that injects size- and volume-controlled gas microbubbles directly into target points in the contaminated water stream.
MiFU’s superior bubble saturation and variable bubble size range are also a first in the produced water rental services industry.
This optimization enables MiFU to treat 1,000 to 100,000 barrels of water per day, reducing oil and contaminants by up to 90 percent and eliminating the need for costly downstream filtration and material management.
APS is scaling up for strategic growth, commencing construction of a second MiFU rental skid and plans to increase employee numbers to 20 by the end of this year to respond to new business enquiries from the North Sea, Norway, West Africa, the Gulf of Mexico and Brazil.
The company is also working on designing units for onshore sectors such as whiskey distilleries, municipal water treatment and wastewater treatment.
Request free information from suppliers about the products featured in this article
Log in or register
Process and Control Today is not responsible for the content of any submitted articles or externally produced articles or images. To email us about an error or omission in this article, click here.
