Screening of forward osmosis membrane potential to treat produced water

Abstract

The produced water is considered one of the largest waste streams in the oil and gas industries. Untreated produced water discharge damages the environment. Forward osmosis utilizes a dilute solution to concentrate contaminated streams to treat produced water. This paper tried to shed some light on forward osmosis‘s potential in treating produced water, measuring forward osmosis commercial membrane‘s effectiveness in treating produced water feed taken from two different points in an oil and gas facility in Malaysia. The rejection for chemical oxygen demand and boron was greater than 80 %, and a considerable decrease in forward osmosis flux was observed. The corrugated plate interceptor‘s inlet feed decreased by 73 % relative to the initial flux, while it decreased by 52.5 % for equalization tank feed. Design expert® was used to optimize the process using a one‐factor experimental design. The regression models indicated a good fit of model. The R2 was 0.9393 and 0.9888 for corrugated plate interceptor‘s inlet, and the equalization tank produced water, respectively. The optimization results concluded a 20 % draw solution concentration with the desirability of 0.927 and 0.987 for two feed waters.