Development of novel graphene oxide based membranes for selective removal of inorganic salts from process-affected water in oil sand/downhole oil production

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Towards the manufacturing of saleable crude oil and derived products, petroleum producers worldwide face thedifficult task of separating complex mixtures of water, solids and oil, termed oilfield emulsions. Oilfieldemulsions produce excess of water in oil, corrosion and mineral scale in pipes. In order to decrease theseproblems, demulsifiers, scale and corrosion inhibitors are commonly used. Alberta oil sands mining operationsand downhole production release a huge amount of chemical processed water (PW). This enormous PWinventory has caused severe problems to the local environment and has posed a great thread to the humanbeings and the inhabited wildlife. In order to develop robust and viable methods to tackle this great challenge,oil sands industries and researchers highly rely on routine and accurate measurements on the PW samples byusing different analytical characterizations. However, it is extremely difficult to achieve accurate and reliablecharacterizations on the PW samples, especially when the concentration of desired components (such as scaleinhibitor and corrosion inhibitor) is much lower than the interfering species coexisting in PW. Usually, the PWsamples contain a high concentration of inorganic salts (high salinity), which can greatly interfere with theintricate measurements and even paralyze the devices. To date, there is still no effective way to reduce orremove the inorganic salts while simultaneously keeping target chemicals unaffected or unchanged in watersamples for further characterization. The main objective of this project is to develop a robust technology,based on graphene oxide membranes, to effectively remove most inorganic salt ions from industrialprocess-affected water while not affect the concentration of desired components (e.g., scale inhibitor andcorrosion inhibitor), thereby ensuring collection of sufficient and qualified process water samples for industrialanalysis as demanded. The fundamental interaction mechanism will be also investigated and the parameters forthe preparation of GO membranes will be further optimized so the technology would be applicable to variousprocess-affected water samples in oil sand and downhole oil production.