Two Phase Partitioning Bioreactor Applied to Produced Water Treatment

Produced waters are the largest waste associated with the production of oil and gas; they contain dissolved salts, oil (dissolved and scattered organic compounds), chemicals and additives involved in the oil well operations, suspended particles, sand and other compounds, making their treatment very complex. In this paper, we propose the use of a TPPB (two phase partitioning bioreactor) for the biological treatment of produced waters. We model the application of the TPPB on the stream after classical pre-treatment stages: the reactor behaviour is based on the controlled release of substrate by means of an organic solvent. This study aims at developing a mathematical model for a TPPB adopting oleic alcohol (Adol 85 NF) as a solvent: we test model reliability by means of a sensitivity analysis in order to evaluate the reactor efficiency for chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal in a produced water stream, aimed at water reuse.