Oilfield do get souring once you start water flooding, this means we are activating the sleeping microbes SRB by injecting nutrients with water. How can we prevent activation on long run and fields don't get sour.
How do we prevent it during the start up of water injection. We know the source so the question how do you stop activation of SRB from day one ?
Thanks Adam I was able to open all papers.
Still my question is can we prevent souring from day one ?
One of the quoted papers (Adam Georgeson post) describes that Nitrate outcompetes sulphate as oxidant in the well. We know this method from sewer systems but we are also used to that if there is more reducing material than the equivalent of nitrate added you will see a sulphide production after the nitrate is consumed.
Nitrate in wastewater doesn't react with sulphide so if sulphide is already formed it doesn't help to add nitrate or biocides. Sulphide scavengers may help.
I recently read a few papers and books about sulphide problems in oilwells and the solutions being employed. Many of the methods appears to be very crude compared to that is used in the water industry. Can somebody suggest a recent review on this that may explain the choice of methods?
This is outside of my experience from water treatment, but if solutions like nitrate addition isn´t effective I then from that I have read I think your solution may be to use a biocide in the injektion water which kill/inhibit the sulfate reducing bacteria.
The reason I was reading about this subject is that I am interested in water treatment particularely cheap and non-toxic methods to remove sulfate from the injection water and removing sulfide from the produced water. I have some ideas but it is difficult to get an overview of the state of the art and how solutions can be tested.
You could use higher concentrations of nitrate in the injection water or go for the inhibitor like aldehyde, triazine....
Yes we are doing that. But is costly and doesn't guarantee prevention for a new field
Henrik, are you doing any research on the issue of oil field souring?
I am doing some work on treatment of water related to oil production and I am interested in the subject. I am in contact with some companies with this problem and we consider to start a project on methods for sulfide treatment and prevention which could include the wells.
We have a group of researchers that is working on the issue. We will be happy to collaborate and avoid dublications
hi ali
Oil Field Souring Control by Nitrate-Reducing Sulfurospirillum spp. That Outcompete Sulfate-Reducing Bacteria for Organic Electron Donors
and please see this link:
http://aem.asm.org/content/73/8/2644.full
I have not really had any time to persue this subject. Does anybody have an opinion if the problem would be solved if we remove sulphate from the water before injection.
If we agree that injection water is mostly seawater which has high sulphate concentration and souring is due to formation of sulfide.
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