A Novel Electrocoagulation System For Produced Water Treatment

Abstract

Produced water, which is generated from the Oil & Gas industries, is becoming a global concern due to its complex composition and large volumes. This thesis introduces a novel electrocoagulation system for the treatment of produced water and focuses on the optimization of reactor design rather than operating conditions. Electrocoagulation is an effective electrochemical technology for the treatment of different types of contaminated waters. Most of the recent Electrocoagulation research has been focusing on pollutant-specific evaluation without paying attention to cell design and optimization. The main objective of the study, therefore, is to develop and test a new cell design that can mitigate the problems associated with cathode passivation, which is often outlined by several researchers as a major shortcoming of electrocoagulation systems. Several screening experiments were carried out to select the type of metal for the cell electrodes. The performance of the proposed cell design was tested and compared to other setups, where the new design proved to be more effective in terms of treatment efficiency and passivation prevention. Finally, the system was optimized for the treatment of produced water, using statistical analysis, and then operated continuously at the determined optimum conditions. The new cell design was able to achieve high performance in terms of the reduction of the organic contaminants, reaching up to 96.8%, 97.9% and 94.6% for TOC, TPH and O&G, respectively. In conclusion, this thesis paves the way for future research to focus on the design and optimization of Electrocoagulation reactors. Future work should also consolidate more efforts towards examining the transition from batch to continuous systems and the possibility of scale up for industrial applications.