Textured Ceramic Membranes for Desilting and Deoiling of Produced Water in the Permian Basin

Overview

Journal iScience

Publisher Cell Press

Date 2022 Sep 26

PMID 36157574

Authors

Natalia Rivera-Gonzalez

Aayushi Bajpayee

Jakob Nielsen

Umme Zakira

Wasif Zaheer

Joseph Handy

Tiffany Sill

Bjorn Birgisson

Mukul Bhatia

Sarbajit Banerjee

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Oil production in the Permian Basin gives rise to large volumes of produced water contaminated by silt, emulsified oil, and additives used for enhanced oil recovery. There is intense interest in the design of membrane modules as sustainable alternatives for produced water treatment to enable the reuse of produced water for agricultural applications, injection into aquifers, and redeployment in oil recovery. Here, we report a hierarchically textured cement-based membrane exhibiting orthogonal wettability, specifically, superhydrophilic and underwater superoleophobic characteristics. The formation of ettringite needles accompanied by embedding of glass spheres imbues multiscale texturation to stainless-steel mesh membranes, enabling the separation of silt and oil from produced water at high flux rates (1600 L h۰m, at ca. 2.7 bar). Oil concentration is reduced as low as 1 ppb with an overall separation efficiency of 99.7% in single-pass filtration. The membranes show outstanding mechanical resilience and retention of performance across multiple cycles.

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