Farewell to Large-Tank Settling: SINOKLE Reshapes the Efficiency Boundary of Produced Fluid Treatment with CDFU Swirl Dissolved Air Flotation
In the process of oil and gas field development, efficient treatment of wellhead produced fluid is a core link in ensuring production safety, achieving resource recovery, and meeting environmental discharge standards. As domestic oil and gas fields enter the middle and late stages of production, the water cut of produced fluid keeps rising and its composition becomes increasingly complex, making the contradiction between traditional treatment processes and the requirements for efficiency, cost, and environmental protection increasingly prominent. Building on years of technical accumulation in oilfield water treatment, Shenzhen SINOKLE Technology Co., Ltd. has launched a new full-process treatment process for wellhead produced fluid, providing a systematic solution for green and efficient oil and gas field development.
1. Technical Background: Industry Pain Points in Produced Fluid Treatment
Wellhead produced fluid is the core product of oil and gas extraction, usually a multiphase mixture of crude oil, water, natural gas, and solid suspended solids, characterized by large fluctuations in oil content, stable emulsification, and complex impurity components. If not thoroughly treated, it not only causes loss of crude oil resources and formation blockage due to substandard reinjection water quality, but may also create environmental risks from the discharge of oily wastewater.
Traditional oil and gas field produced fluid treatment mostly uses the classic process of “gravity settling+ + coagulation sedimentation+ + filtration”, which suffers from a long treatment flow, a large equipment footprint, high chemical dosing, high operating energy consumption, and large oil sludge generation, making it hard to meet the current needs of oil and gas fields for cost reduction with efficiency improvement and green, low-carbon development. Especially in space-constrained scenarios such as offshore platforms and remote well sites, the limitations of traditional processes are even more prominent.
2. Limitations and Challenges of Traditional Treatment Processes
Traditional wellhead produced fluid treatment processes mainly rely on gravity separation and chemical flocculation. The core flow is: after preliminary gas-liquid separation in a two-phase separator, the produced fluid enters a large-volume settling tank for gravity oil-water separation, and then suspended solids are removed by dosing PAC, PAM and other flocculants, and finally, after filtration through a quartz sand filter, it is reinjected or discharged.
This process has three core shortcomings:
1. Low treatment efficiency: gravity settling relies on density difference and has poor removal of emulsified oil and fine suspended solids; it requires long residence times, and a single unit has a long treatment cycle, making it hard to handle high water-cut produced fluid.
2. High operating costs: large amounts of chemicals are required for demulsification and flocculation, which not only increases chemical costs but also produces large amounts of oily sludge with high subsequent disposal costs; at the same time, large-volume equipment and a long process lead to persistently high energy and maintenance costs.
3. Prominent environmental pressure: traditional processes generate large amounts of oil sludge and make it hard for oily wastewater to meet standards, easily causing soil and water pollution, and are inconsistent with current environmental regulations and the “dual carbon” goals.
3. SINOKLE's New Process: A Full-Process, High-Efficiency Treatment Solution
In response to different discharge standards for oilfield produced water, SINOKLE has developed three targeted oilfield produced water treatment solutions to meet different customer needs
Core process modules
1. High-efficiency swirl pre-separation (HAC): using two swirl separators in series, it uses a centrifugal force field to rapidly achieve preliminary oil-water separation, efficiently removing free oil and most solid suspended solids to reduce the load on subsequent treatment. Compared with traditional settling tanks, separation efficiency is improved by more than 3 times, and the footprint is only a fraction of that of traditional equipment.
2. Swirl dissolved air flotation (CDFU): building on swirl separation, dissolved air flotation technology is introduced; by injecting N₂ or pure natural gas, fine bubbles are formed that efficiently adsorb emulsified oil and fine suspended solids, achieving deep de-oiling and turbidity removal. Two-stage CDFU in series can reduce effluent oil content to 30mg/L or less, far better than industry standards.
3. Fine filtration (KFM): using two-stage KFMfine filters in series, the flotation effluent undergoes deep filtration to further remove residual oil and suspended solids, ensuring reinjection water quality meets formation injection requirements, while automatic filter backwashing avoids cumbersome manual operation.
4. Sludge dewatering and resource recovery: the sludge from flotation and filtration is processed by dewatering equipment into dried sludge cakes for bagged off-site transport, achieving volume reduction; the separated waste oil is collected and sent to the oil pipeline for recovery and reuse, while waste gas is sent to a flare or natural gas pipeline, achieving maximum resource utilization and zero-pollution discharge.
4. Technical Advantages: Reshaping the Value of Produced Fluid Treatment
Compared with traditional solutions, SINOKLE's wellhead produced fluid treatment process has four core advantages:
1. Efficient and compact with strong adaptability: the entire process uses a modular, skid-mounted design with a small footprint and convenient installation, and can be rapidly deployed in space-constrained scenarios such as offshore platforms and remote well sites; treatment capacity can be flexibly adjusted according to produced fluid output.
2. Cost reduction and efficiency improvement with resource recovery: no large amounts of chemicals are needed, and operating costs are reduced by more than 30% or more; resources such as waste oil and natural gas are fully recovered and reused, achieving “turning waste into treasure” and significantly improving the economic benefits of oil and gas fields.
3. Green and low-carbon with environmental compliance: sludge volume reduction rate exceeds 80% or more, there is no risk of oily wastewater discharge, and waste gas is harmlessly treated, fully meeting national environmental regulations and helping oil and gas fields achieve green production.
4. Intelligent O&M, stable and reliable: the entire process supports automatic control and remote monitoring, reducing manual intervention; the equipment has a low failure rate and is easy to maintain, ensuring long-term stable operation of the produced fluid treatment system.
Conclusion
As an innovation pioneer in the field of oil and gas field water treatment, Shenzhen SINOKLE Technology Co., Ltd., driven by technological innovation, has created an efficient, economical, and environmentally friendly full-process solution targeting the industry pain points of wellhead produced fluid treatment. This process not only overcomes the limitations of traditional treatment processes, but also provides core support for oil and gas fields to achieve cost reduction with efficiency improvement and green, low-carbon development, making it an ideal choice in the current field of oil and gas field produced fluid treatment. In the future, SINOKLE Technology will continue to deepen technological innovation in water treatment and inject stronger momentum into the high-quality development of China's oil and gas fields.
