Effective Treatment of Humic Acid Foulants in SAGD Produced Water

Humic acids, one major type of organic foulants in steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) produced water, can precipitate on surface and downhole equipment in SAGD facilities, resulting in high cleaning costs, potential equipment damage and decrease of injectivity of disposal wells. In this paper, a cost-effective chemical solution is presented where an alcohol ethoxylate surfactant/chelating agent package can efficiently disperse the organic fouling molecules in SAGD produced water; therefore, the approach is expected to significantly mitigate the humic acid related fouling issues in the SAGD system. In this study, a variety of commercially available surfactant products were evaluated for their aids in well injectivity on humic acid molecules in the freshly obtained SAGD produced water. The lab testing filtration apparatus was specially designed to simulate the sandstone formation geology of SAGD disposal wells. An "efficiency factor" was defined to grade the dispersing performance of the surfactant and/or surfactant/chelating agent package in the lab filtration tests. The efficiency factor provides a reasonable estimation regarding how well the chemical can reduce the plugging risk in a disposal well as compared to the untreated produced water. Among all the surfactant products tested, an alcohol ethoxylate surfactant with the appropriate molecular structure shows distinguished dispersing performance on humic acids in SAGD produced water. However, the surfactant alone was found inconsistent in the dispersing performance when different batches of the produced water were involved. Inclusion of the specific metal chelating agents to the above surfactant formulation improved the dispersing performance consistency. The chelator molecules presumably help destroy the intermolecular bridges among humic acid molecules in the SAGD produced water; thereby, increasing the dispersing effectiveness of the alcohol ethyoxylate surfactants. Tests show that the efficiency factor of the surfactant/chelating agent package is higher than 8, which implies that the formulation could lead to eight times extension of the interval between workovers on SAGD disposal wells, a significant reduction for the operational downtime and costs. This study presented a cost-effective chemical solution to help disperse the humic acid molecules in SAGD produced water, which can help significantly reduce the fouling risk caused by organic foulants, improve injectivity and extend the intervals between workovers of SAGD disposal wells.