A Critical Review of Alternative Desalination Technologies for Smart Waterflooding

Abstract

The results of this review study show that there is no commercial technology yet available to selectively remove specific ions from seawater in one step and optimally meet the desired water-chemistry requirements of smart waterflooding. As a result, different conceptual process configurations involving selected combinations of chemical precipitation, conventional/emerging desalination, and produced-water-treatment technologies are proposed. These configurations represent both approximate and improved solutions to incorporate specific key ions into the smart water selectively, besides presenting the key opportunities to treat produced-water/ membrane reject water and provide ZLD capabilities in smartwaterflooding applications. The developed configurations can provide an attractive solution to capitalize on existing huge producedwater resources available in carbonate reservoirs to generate smart water and minimize wastewater disposal during fieldwide implementation of smart waterflood.