Petroleum Recovery Research Center A Division ofNew Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology801 Leroy PlaceSocorro, NM 87801

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MNon-Profit Organization

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Socorro, NMPERMIT NO. 9

New Mexico Institute of Mining and TechnologyDaniel H. López, President

Board of RegentsEx Officio

Susana Martinez, Governor of New MexicoDr. Jose J. Garcia, Secretary of Higher Education

AppointedRichard N. Carpenter, Santa Fe, President, Santa Fe

Jerry A. Armijo, SocorroDeborah Peacock, Corrales

Abe Silver, Santa FeOmar Soliman, Student Regent, Socorro

Petroleum Recovery Research CenterRobert Lee, Director

Senior StaffRobert Balch, Research ScientistJill S. Buckley, Senior Scientist

Martha Cather, Industrial Technology CoordinatorReid B. Grigg, Senior Engineer

Ning Liu, Research ScientistRandall S. Seright, Senior Engineer

PRRC Publications OfficeLiz Bustamante, Editor

This newsletter is produced by the PRRC Publications Office. Views expressed are those of the PRRC staff. Submissions and letters to the editor are welcome. Reprints from the PRRC Review are permitted, provided that credit is given to the New Mexico PRRC. Please send two copies of the publication containing the reprint to Liz Bustamante, PRRC, New Mexico Tech, 801 Leroy Place, Socor ro, NM 87801. PHONE: (575) 835-5406. FAX (575) 835-6031. EMAIL: lizb@prrc.nmt.edu. WEBSITE: http://baervan.nmt.edu

Petroleum Recovery Research CenterA Division of New Mexico Tech

The PRRC is a state-supported center that conducts research on improving methods of recovering crude oil and natural gas and that transfers petroleum technology to domestic oil producers. Funding for the PRRC comes from three sources: the State of New Mexico, the federal government (Department of Energy), and private industry.

PRRC

Oil price data from PRRC's OCTANE web-site. Prices are NYMEX, through June 30, 2012.

PRRC Biannual NewsletterVolume 27, No. 2: Fall 2012

The Petroleum Recovery Research Center is a division of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology

New Project Targets Produced Water

(cont'd, p. 2)

PRRC researchers recently won a re-search contract from the Research Part-nership to Secure Energy for America (RPSEA) for the continuation of an innovative produced water treatment project. “Cost-Effective Treatment of Pro-duced Water Using Co-Produced Ener-gy Sources Phase II: Field Scale Dem-onstration and Commercialization,” will scale up a previously developed, RPSEA-funded field prototype and test the unit for continuous operation with supplemental solar energy. Phase II includes optimization of the existing prototype using solar en-ergy, followed by fabrication of a de-velopment scale modular prototype that can handle higher amounts of inlet

water, with increased automation, for continuous operation. The key objective in the new re-search project is the optimization of the unique humidification-dehumidification (HDH) process that was developed and successfully field-tested in the first project. Humidification-dehumidification is a thermal water desalination method based on evaporation of brines and con-densation of the resulting humid air, mostly at ambient pressure, similar to the natural water cycle. Dr. Robert Lee is the project Man-ager and the PI is Dr. Robert Balch for this two-year, $1.3 million project. The industry partner is Harvard Petroleum

Corporation LLC, who also worked on prototype development and testing for the original RPSEA project. Successful development of this project and its widespread use could result in a considerable decline in pro-duced water disposal needs. The re-sulting purified water generated by the proposed process is very clean, with potential value as a water resource for land revegetation, oil production op-erations, or other uses. In addition, any reduction in deep well injection will significantly reduce the risk of ground water contamination from injected and/or transported produced water. Use of this process could even reduce the need for pipelines and associated right of ways, and reduce truck traffic and associated air pollution. The continuation aims to improve the prototype for a higher processing capacity unit, using coproduced energy sources and solar energy, and optimiz-ing and increasing automation. In Phase I, the HDH field proto-type was designed to process 20 bbl/day of produced water feed, employing humidification as the primary unit op-eration, with evaporation to clean the water. Phase II will focus on retrofit-ting the existing setup with a solar loop and optimized system parameters,

Please note that the

PRRC Review now ap-

pears in the Spring and

the Fall.

Produced water treatment and disposal is a constant concern for produc-ers. PRRC's latest project is the newest in a series devoted to this issue.

page 2 pRRC biannual newsletteR page 3 pRRC biannual newsletteR

a division of the new mexiCo institute of mining and teChnology a division of the new mexiCo institute of mining and teChnology

Publications, PresentationsAchanta, D.S. (2012) “Simulation of Leak-age Scenarios for CO2 Storage in Saline Aquifers at Gordon Creek, Utah,” M.S. Thesis, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.Achanta, D. S. Balch, R., and Grigg, R. (2012) “Simulation of Leakage Scenarios for CO2 storage at Gordon Creek, Utah." Paper 151483 presented at the Carbon Management Technology Conference, Orlando, 7–9 February.Balch, R. (2012) “Field Testing and Diag-nostics of Radial-Jet Well-Stimulation for Enhanced Oil Recovery from Marginal Re-serves.” Presented at the RPSEA Onshore Production Conference: Technological Keys to Enhance Production Operations April 10, 2012 Midland, Texas.Brattekås, B., Haugen, Å., Graue, A., and Seright, R.S. (2012) “Gel Dehydration by Spontaneous Imbibition of Brine from Aged Polymer Gel.” Paper SPE 153118 presented at the Eighteenth SPE Improved Oil Recovery Symposium held in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA, 14–18 April.

Luo, A. (2011) “Dynamic Simulation As-sessment Model of an EOR Project.” M.S. Thesis, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.Nsiah, A. (2012) “Assessing CO2 En-hanced Oil Recovery Potential of Re-sidual Oil Zones in the Permian Basin Using Landmark Geomodeling Tools And ECLIPSE Simulation.” M.S.Thesis, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.Seright, R.S., Fan, T., Wavrik, K., Wan, H., Gaillard, N., and Favero, C. (2011). “Rheology of a New Sulfonic Associative Polymer in Porous Media.” SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering (December 2011) 726-734. Seright, R.S., Zhang, G., Akanni, O.O., and Wang, D. (2011) “A Comparison of Polymer Flooding with In-Depth Profile Modification.” Paper SPE 146087 pre-sented at the 2011 CSUG/SPE Canadian Unconventional Resources Conference, Calgary, AB, 15–17 November. Willhite, G.P. and Seright, R.S. eds. (2011) Polymer Flooding. Society of Petroleum

Engineers, Richardson, TX.Yu, J., An, C., Liu, N., and Lee, R. (2012) “Foam Mobility Control for Nanoparticle-Stabilized Supercritical CO2 Foam.” Paper SPE 153336 presented at the SPE Sym-posium on Improved Oil Recovery, Tulsa, USA, April 14–18.Jianjia Yu, J., Cheng An, C., Di Mo, Ning Liu, N., and Robert Lee, R. (2012) “Study of Adsorption and Transportation Behavior of Nanoparticles in three different porous media”, paper SPE 153337 presented at the SPE Symposium on Improved Oil Recovery Tulsa, April 14–8.Yu, J., Liu, N., Li, L. and Lee, R. (2012) “Generation of nanoparticle-stabilized supercritical CO2 foams,” Paper CMTC 150849 presented at the Carbon Manage-ment Technology Conference Orlando, , February 7–9.Yu, J. (2012) Static and Dynamic Charac-teristics of Nanosilica Particles Stabilized CO2 Foam For Mobility Control Application. PhD Dissertation, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.

PRRC Produced Water ResearchThis new project is the latest in PRRC’s history of produced water research. Our effort began in 2000, in recognition of the problem of the saline wastewaters that are a byproduct of oil and gasfield waterflooding technology. Produced water is expensive to treat and dispose of, posing considerable headaches for producers. Many marginal wells are uneconomical to produce, owing to wa-ter treatment costs.

The New Mexico Produced Water Tax Incentive, passed in 2001, further encouraged the development of innova-tive treatment methods for the brackish water pumped from oil and gas drilling operations. In response to the need for pro-duced water management strategies, PRRC partnered with industry, state, and other research organizations to cre-ate a multidisciplinary joint approach to address the produced water prob-lems of NM producers. The first research project on pro-duced water treatment, “Modified Re-verse Osmosis System for Treatment of Produced Water,” (“Waterdog”), fund-ed in 2000 by NETL, was an effort to investigate the potential of clay mem-branes for produced water treatment. The Waterdog results were encour-aging enough to generate more research on fabricating and testing membranes. Researchers were looking for a way to develop a small-scale reverse osmosis (RO) operation that would be usable at the wellhead and economical for small producers. Subsequent produced water treat-ment projects investigated the proper-

followed by an upscale of the proto-type and/or modularization of mul-tiple units in series, in parallel, or a combination of series and parallel to match water purification requirements to any site. Although a single larger unit could be fabricated for some op-erations, the cost of fabrication, ease of maintenance and overall econom-ics of a modular system appears more favorable. In Phase II, the process will oper-ate at an inlet temperature of 175°F or 80°C, with a supplemental air blower, followed by condensation in an air-cooled condenser. The average treat-ment cost with this method is estimat-ed to be $0.31/bbl (for a first pass yield of 18% clean water), which is a great improvement over to the $0.79/bbl es-tablished in the lab scale tests in Phase I and a vast improvement over current costs for produced water treatment in New Mexico, which are ~$2.50/bbl. The decrease in process cost was established by using a low-energy-intensive HDH process, with Phase II implementing solar energy and co-produced heat. The system not only processes water economically, but also excludes the use of fossil energy as used in conventional desalination plants to preheat water. The portabil-ity of the unit and the fact that it can be located at a wellhead or at a field gathering site mitigates transportation costs, a major cost factor. In Phase II, two demonstration tests with water purification units will be conducted. The first demonstra-tion unit will incorporate solar heat-ing for water and insulated tanks into the existing HDH prototype, which is located at a field site near Artesia, to test maximum throughput and to op-timize and automate the process for night and cloudy weather operation. A production scale prototype will then be tested at the wellheads of the Fed 00 #3 well, which is operated by Harvard Petroleum Corporation LLC. The Fed 00 #3 has a typical water production of 30 bbl/day so the process will be de-signed to reduce that waste by 80–90%

of a low-cost portable distillation unit to be deployed at the wellhead, yielding water clean enough for uses like drill-ing, stimulating, or waterflooding. Industry partners Robert L. Bay-less, Producer LLC and Harvard Pe-troleum Company, LLC were involved with this research, whose support in-cluded site use, electricity, demonstra-tion assistance, and water sampling. Specific aims to drastically lower treat-ment cost of produced water were: (1) solar energy and co-produced energy sources driving the desalination pro-cess, thereby reducing electricity con-sumption; (2) a specific design for max-imizing internal heat transfer and latent heat recovery; and (3) deployment at the wellhead, resulting in a reduced need for water storage and transporta-tion. Progress on this project has led to PRRC’s latest funded research effort. With Phase II, PRRC researchers will continue to pursue the goal of water pu-rification at the wellhead.

Produced Water (cont'd from p. 1)

ods to synthesize these membranes and ways to optimize operating conditions for water and ion exchange, resulting in a durable, cost-effective membrane. A membrane demonstration unit was constructed for Phase III, and field test-ing was performed with simulated pro-duced water as well as actual samples of CBM produced water from SJB op-erators. In another NETL-funded project, PRRC researchers in the Industrial Services and Outreach Group (ISOG), in partnership with the NMOCD, de-signed and implemented a GIS and tools to help operators and regulators with necessary data and useful infor-mation to help them make management and regulatory decisions. The “New Mexico Water and Infrastructure Data System” (NM WAIDS) went online in 2005, and is still located at http://oc-tane.nmt.edu/ waterquality/. In 2008, PRRC researchers were awarding funding for “Cost-Effective Treatment of Produced Water Using Co-Produced Energy Sources for Small Producers,” involving the development

while producing over 25 bbls/d of puri-fied water. One main objective of this project is to determine optimal design param-eters and fabrication methods. Fab-rication of a second production scale prototype will allow determination of production costs at a variety of scales based on materials and labor costs for a range of production rates. As more units are produced, fabrication costs should be reduced. The final goal of this project is to test a production scale prototype and have a vendor prepared to manufacture units at project's end.

ties of zeolites as membranes, particu-larly in the project “Treating Coal-Bed Methane Produced Water for Benefi-cial Use by MFI Zeolite Membranes,” (2004), funded under the U.S. DOE/NETL’s Produced Water Management program A new technology of reverse os-mosis (RO) through molecular sieve zeolite membranes was developed to efficiently treat the high total dissolved salts (TDS) in coalbed natural gas pro-duced water. PRRC researchers devel-oped a zeolite RO membrane that was organic solvent-resistant and capable of simultaneously separating salts and organics from produced water. Zeolites are minerals with a po-rous structure, the aluminosilicate members of the family of microporous solids known as “molecular sieves,” which have the special capacity to se-lectively take up molecules according to size. The smaller water molecules can pass through a zeolite membrane, while the larger solids stay behind. In Phase II of this project, re-searchers worked on improved meth-

This view of the prototype HDH water cleaning unit shows the manifold contain-ing V-notched weirs for the water inlet. The weirs are designed for evenly spread-ing water as it is introduced into the system.

(cont'd on p.3)

(cont'd from p. 2)Produced Water