New Method To Process Water in Oil

Scientist have created a new way to process oil with a solvent-based that is much cheaper than reverse osmosis or distillation based on water evaporating.

Brine water produced by the oil and gas industry contains higher dissolved salts than ocean water. Which is a growing environmental concern. In the latest treatment scientist had a breakthrough. The hypersaline seawaters can pollute surrounding communities water resources and it might be difficult to treat them.

Engineers from Columbia University in the U.S. have developed a new approach to desalination. The method, known as “temperature swing solvent extraction” (TSSE), involves mixing the hypersaline water with an amine solvent.

The method can desalinate very high-salinity water, up to seven times the concentration of seawater. It is higher than the currently used method of seawater desalination, known as reverse osmosis, and the water evaporation method can achieve.

That breakthrough method has been published in the scientific journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters.

Once it is mixed with the seawater, the solvent which is less dense, is lifted to the top of the Seawater.

The mix is placed in a room temperature bath to complete the water extraction, afterword the solvent is decanted from the mixture.

The solvent cannot hold water at higher temperature, the water is released at the bottom which can be collected.

Assistant professor Ngai Yin Yip, who published the paper, said: “I thought solvent extraction could be a good alternative desalination approach that is radically different from conventional methods because it is membrane-less and not based on evaporative phase-change. “Our results show that TSSE could be a disruptive technology – it’s effective, efficient, scalable, and can be sustainably powered.”

Crucially, the solvent method is powered by low-grade heat, under 70C (158F), meaning it is far less energy-intensive to use, and can remove up to 98.4% of the salt in these brines and recover high amounts of water.

 “We think TSSE will be transformational for the water industry,” Dr Yip added.

 “It can displace the prevailing practice of costly distillation for desalination of high-salinity brines and tackle higher salinities that reverse osmosis cannot handle.

 “We can eliminate the pollution problems from these brines and create cleaner, more useable water for our planet.”