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

为了生产可销售的原油及其衍生产品，世界各地的石油生产商面临着分离水、固体和油的复杂混合物（称为油田乳剂）的艰巨任务。油田乳化会造成油中水分过剩、管道腐蚀和矿垢。为了减少这些问题，通常使用破乳剂、阻垢剂和缓蚀剂。阿尔伯塔省油砂开采作业和井下生产会释放出大量的化学处理水（PW）。这一巨大的PWinventory给当地环境造成了严重的问题，对人类和栖息的野生动物造成了巨大的威胁。为了开发稳健可行的方法来应对这一巨大挑战，油砂行业和研究人员高度依赖于通过使用不同的分析表征对PW样品进行常规和精确的测量。然而，在PW样品上实现准确和可靠的表征是非常困难的，特别是当所需组分（如阻垢剂和缓蚀剂）的浓度远低于PW中共存的干扰物质时。通常，pw样品含有高浓度的无机盐（高盐度），这可能会极大地干扰复杂的测量，甚至使设备瘫痪。迄今为止，仍然没有有效的方法来减少或去除无机盐，同时保持目标化学物质在水样中不受影响或不变，以进一步表征。该项目的主要目标是开发一种基于氧化石墨烯膜的强大技术，以有效地从工业过程影响的水中去除大多数无机盐离子，同时不影响所需成分（例如阻垢剂和缓蚀剂）的浓度，从而确保收集足够和合格的工艺水样用于工业分析。研究人员还将研究基本的相互作用机制，并进一步优化氧化石墨烯膜的制备参数，以便该技术适用于油砂和井下采油中各种受工艺影响的水样。

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.