In the rugged Northern Alberta environment, installation of conventional Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) produced water treatment systems can be challenging. SAGD is a technique to recover bitumen from the oil sands formation. The oil is recovered by further processing and upgrading the recovered bitumen which are called Oil Sands. As the bituminous resource is mixed with sand in the formation the liquid that is brought to the surface is a mixture of oil and water. The oil and water are separated in a deoiling process.
Produced Water Evaporation System
The water is then sent to Aquatech’s produced water treatment system. Once water is purified, the water is used as feed to the boiler for generation of steam for injection into the formation and the cycle continues. SmartMOD is an advanced water recycle solution for produced water treatment in the SAGD process. Innovative design transforms tall, thermal evaporator vessels into smaller modular sections that maintain vertical falling principles in addition to enhancing system performance and reliability.
SmartMOD At a Glance
- Reduces total installed costs (TIC)
- Compresses overall project schedule
- Increased availability with lower downtime
What SmartMOD Delivers to Oil Producers
- Elimination of concrete foundations
- Cost and schedule certainty
- Overall project schedule reduced by 25%
- Optimized logistics
- Minimized field labor
- Modules and building integration
- Field installation costs reduced by > 75%
- 99% process availability
- Guaranteed drum boiler distillate quality
- Integrated online cleaning system ensures continuous production
Modular, flexible and redeployable, the SmartMOD evaporator system is the lowest CAPEX and life cycle cost evaporator system available today. It utilizes vertical tube falling film evaporator design, a proven technology for treating difficult produced water sources. Benefits over conventional evaporator systems include 10% lower power consumption. Its multiple section design ensures ASME distillate quality, and on-line washing allows for continuous distillate production at >75% of design capacity during washing.
The SmartMOD evaporator system is also engineered to minimize field installation labor and costs. With its dramatically reduced center of mass and evaporator weight, the SmartMOD module and vessels eliminate the need for building a large evaporator building or expensive foundation labor and materials. Its innovative design also reduces freight costs for transportation of the complete system to site.
SAGD (Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage) is an enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technology for producing heavy crude oil and bitumen. It is an advanced form of steam stimulation where high pressure steam is injected into the formation, heating the bitumen in the formation, which lowers its viscosity and allows the mixture of bitumen and water from condensed steam to be pumped out.
The liquid that is pumped to the surface is a mixture of oil and water. The mixture is separated to a predominantly oil and water fractions in the de-oiling process. The water fraction (or Produced Water) is sent to the Aquatech system for treatment and reuse in the facility. In addition to the evaporator technology, Aquatech has supplied conventional systems that include Walnut Shell Filters, Warm Lime Softening, Afterfilters and Ion Exchange softening. Once purified, the produced water is used as feed to the boiler for steam generation and injected into the formation, and the cycle continues.