Abstract
An assessment of radiologically enhanced residual materials generated during oil and gas production in near Baku, Azerbaijan, was conducted. Distribution of the 228Ra/226Ra Activity Ratio (AR) with depth in a sediment core from radium lake was examined. The dashed line represented ingrowth assuming that 228Ra was below equilibrium with 232Th in the young sediments near the top and reached equilibrium at a depth around 10 cm. In this study the radium isotopic data are used to provide estimates of the age of formation of the radiobarite contaminant and age of oil field lake. The results indicate that, the upper two layers in the core (up to 4 cm) contain fallout 137Cs so at least these layers are no older than about 40 yrs. Formation waters that are sent to disposal ponds may consist of accumulated heavy hydrocarbons, paraffin, inorganic solids, and heavy emulsions. We report here results of chemical and radiochemical measurements from formation waters separated from oil pumped from approximately 700 m below ground near Baku, Azerbaijan. Our results also include data from a formation water storage pond (“radium lake”) where the waters are temporarily stored after oil is separated and then eventually disposed of by pumping into the Caspian Sea. We also analyzed the associated sediment for radiochemical components. Our study was intended to investigate how radium fractionated between the pond water and sediments.
Highlights
Oil and gas production and associated processing operations often result in the accumulation of Naturally-Oc-How to cite this paper: Humbatov, F.Y., Suleymanov, B.A., Ahmedov, M.M. and Balayev, V.S. (2016) Radium Isotopes in an Oil-Field Produced Lake near Baku, Azerbaijan
We report here results of chemical and radiochemical measurements from formation waters separated from oil pumped from approximately 700 m below ground near Baku, Azerbaijan
There are 86 wells operating in the immediate area around the formation water lake
Summary
How to cite this paper: Humbatov, F.Y., Suleymanov, B.A., Ahmedov, M.M. and Balayev, V.S. (2016) Radium Isotopes in an Oil-Field Produced Lake near Baku, Azerbaijan. Deep formation waters, often with high total dissolved solids, tend to be enriched in natural radium isotopes When these fluids are brought to the surface, CO2 may escape, resulting in a pH rise with the solubility products of many sulfate and carbonate species being exceeded. The production waste streams most likely to be contaminated by elevated radium concentrations include produced water, scale, and sludge. In the case of scale, the radium coprecipitates primarily with barium, to form hard insoluble sulfate deposits (barite) (Doerner and Hoskins, 1925) [8]. Such scale typically forms on the inside of piping, filters, injection wellhead equipment, and other water handling equipment, and can form as a coating on produced sand grains. The ratio is determined from the direct radioactivity measurement of the sediment samples, while the initial activity ratio of (228Ra/226Ra)0 is estimated by measuring the radium isotopes in modern produced water
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