An Integrated Approach to Water Treatment and Recycle in Oil and Gas Production and Processing Via Thermal Membrane Distillation

Thermal membrane distillation (TMD) is an emerging technology in the field of water treatment and recycle. It is driven primarily by heat which creates a vapor-pressure difference across a porous hydrophobic membrane. It gained interest because of many advantages; it can work properly with feed temperature below boiling point and can provide high level of separation of the treated water. Because TMD relies on heating the wastewater feed stream, one of the key benefits is that it allows thermal integration with low-quality sources of heat. This thermal coupling can significantly enhance the treatment and recycle costs. The paper presents an integrated approach to the design of TMD networks. First, TMD is modeled based on key design and operating variables. Next, a framework is developed for cost-effective thermal coupling. Several applications in upstream production and downstream processing of oil and gas are presented. The results are compared with conventional separation techniques and with systems lacking heat integration.