Membrane technology for enhanced oil recovery through produced water

Enhanced oil recovery can potentially be achieved through optimization and improvement of injection fluid. In current study, membrane technology has been applied to treat produced water according to various methodologies to increase its perspectives as injection fluid. Low-pressure driven membrane processes have been applied to evaluate their potential to separate oil from produced water. Membrane distillation has been applied to obtain high-quality freshwater from the deoiled produced water (Figure 1), which can subsequently be applied in making desirable formulations of injection fluid. One potential example of such formulations is oil-in-water emulsions with targeted characteristics. However, the use of an emulsion as smart injection fluid requires specifically tailored parameters such as droplet size and size distribution, long-term stability, etc. under elevated pressures and temperatures. Membrane emulsification (ME) have been applied to prepare tailored emulsions.