The Application of Membrane Technologies in Waste Water Treatment of the Desalting Plants

The objective of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of treating desalting plant produced water to meet the applicable discharge limits and injection to well standard consistently using membrane processes to either reduce the risk of clogging of the injection well. The effluent of sand filtration unit from Aghajari maroon 2 produced water treatment was used as a feed. A Pilot scale hybrid membrane unit with a spun polypropylene 0.45 µ pore size microfilter and a hollow fiber polypropylene 0.1 to 0.01 µ pore size ultrafilter membrane was used in this study. Trials on different membrane fluxes were conducted for three processes: microfiltration, ultrafiltration and hybrid micro and ultrafiltration process. Results have shown that flow rate of 32 LPM was more applicable. The optimal flux was 120 LMH. The average percentage removal of Turbidity, Oil and grease, TSS and particle size was 98.53, 98.81, 98.23 and 99.93 respectively. The results showed that the quality of the product consistently met the requirement for injection to well. It was concluded that it is feasible to treat the produced water using micro and ultra filter.