Treatment of produced water for disposal, water flooding, or as feed to once through steam generators has been practiced for decades. Experience with traditional (nutshell) filters and ion exchange system have identified opportunities for improvements of these processes in terms of CAPEX, OPEX, operability, and safety. This presentation will describe advanced filtration and ion exchange technologies that have been introduced in recent years and have generated interest among producers. Some of the performance features include the ability to provide finer filtration of solids, to reduce salt consumption (and waste) in ion exchange softening, and to eliminate the use of acid and caustic for regenerating weak acid cations exchangers while still ensuring low hardness water from high TDS and high hardness produced water feed sources. This presentation will describe the technologies and provide operating experiences of a number of local installations.

Paul Pajunen has, for the last 24 years, been with Eco-Tec Inc. of Pickering, Ontario, Canada in various roles as process engineer, customer service engineer, and sales/marketing representative. He currently leads Eco-Tec’s business development activities for the western United States. Mr. Pajunen holds a degree in chemical engineering from the University of Waterloo and is a registered professional engineer in the province of Ontario, Canada.