Evaporation & Crystallization

Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) /SAGD Produced Water Treatment

Veolia has developed several solutions specifically to address the challenges of SAGD produced water treatment. These novel process and engineering designs address some of the major issues facing producers.

 These innovations include:

• Proprietary Vapor Washer design in evaporation equipment increases distillate quality for use in drum boilers by preventing salts and other undesirable solids from entering boiler feed water
• The Silica Sorption™ Process (patent pending), using HPD evaporation technology, drastically reduces caustic / sodium hydroxide consumption (by a factor of 10) and removes silica from solution to produce a slurry suitable for economic on-site or off-site disposal as well as conventional ZLD systems
• Innovative, skid-mounted ,and modular solutions to provide simpler transport and installation of large-scale process equipment
   

Coal Seam Gas (CSG) Produced Water Treatment

The produced water removed during CSG production contains a unique group of constituents that can be challenging to treat for beneficial reuse in conventional thermal systems.

Veolia Water Technologies has developed specific process designs for CSG water utilizing advanced HPD brine concentrator technology to reduce waste volumes and provide maximum recovery of clean distillate. This process greatly reduces chemical consumption when compared to conventional treatment schemes as well as produces high-quality condensate with control of the scaling that is associated with the unique chemistry of this wastewater.

Further concentration of the waste and greater recovery can be achieved through the addition of a brine crystallization system in which valuable by-product salts may be recovered and the only waste generated is a solid salt cake for disposal.
 

Treatment of Produced Water and Flowback Water from Hydraulic Fracturing

Veolia has developed a proprietary process specifically designed for applications that have wastewater containing much higher TDS such as hydraulic fracturing for shale gas. Using HPD evaporation and crystallization technology, the process effectively manages the highly soluble brine to reduce system fouling and recovers high volumes of water for reuse.

Ideal for both flowback and produced water, this solution includes:

• Efficient removal sodium and calcium chlorides as well as the heavy metals in the effluent generated in shale gas production
• Only waste produced is a solid saltcake that passed TCLP testing, suitable for landfill disposal
• Eliminates the need for pretreatment (in the case of produced water from the Marcellus Shale region)
• Recovers greater than 95% of the wastewater for reuse
• Offered as a Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) system

These systems can be offered as well-site or central treatment plants on a design-build basis. Plant operation and maintenance services are also available from Veolia, the world's largest operator of municipal and industrial water treatment facilities.
 

Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD)

Cutting-edge production methods in the oil and gas industry, such as Gas-to-Liquid (GTL) and produced water treatment for boiler feed water, require stringent levels of wastewater treatment to achieve environmental objectives to Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) and provide beneficial reuse as valuable makeup water.

Veolia offers highly integrated ZLD systems as a total solution for oil and gas producers. Use of brine crystallizers, in addition to the brine concentration systems, removes nearly all of the solid contaminants from the process while further recovering valuable water for beneficial reuse.

The experience for these systems allows effective treatment of these streams to minimize waste volumes while producing quality water for reuse through efficient evaporation and crystallization systems, often on a design-build basis.