Water Treatment Plant Strategy Improvements for Thermal Operation

Abstract

Abstract Petroleum Development Oman LLC (PDO) is Oman's premier oil producer and operates several fields. Thermal Development is one of key enablers in Oman for significant Oil Recovery. "A" facility is designed to receive Aquifer Pump-off (APO) water from reservoir and use it for steam generation after it get treated in Water Treatment Plant (WTP). Thermal Enhanced Oil Recovery application in Sultanate of Oman has been first operated in Gulf region back in 2012 with enormous lesson learnt insights on selecting and operating water treatment facilities. The Purpose of Water Treatment plant is to remove hardness of APO Well Water to make it suitable for Steam generation. The processes involve removal of suspended solids, traces of oil and dissolved minerals from water. Quality of boiler (steam generator) feedwater is of critical importance in steam injection projects. Field experience indicates that most generators downtime is caused by water treatment performance concerns, hence operating outside water quality specification results in damaging mechanisms of the boiler tubes i.e., corrosion and scaling deposition. Maintaining safe operation of Amal boilers has come with huge annual OPEX Cost of >40% of total "A" Facility Expenditure from chemical treatment, boilers inspection/repair and steam unavailability due to maintenance. Ensuring safe operation of Amal boilers involved looking thoroughly at various technical displaces and aspect which detailed study of followings: Steam Quality Boiler Integrity Boiler feedwater Limits Other Water Treatment Option Boiler Flow Assurance Chemical Treatment Therefore, comprehensive reviews/ studies from multi disciplines were conducted to identify areas of risk and provide recommendations for proper mitigations. The objective of this paper is to summarize the outcomes of the water treatment plant enhancement project executed to debottleneck the capacity of existing WTPs and provide the detailed investigation on WTP and potential boilers integrity concerns, develop technical guidelines and agreed recommendations across all PDO operation.