OPUS® II Technology - A New Innovation For Produced Water And Frac Flowback Treatment
OPUS® II is a proprietary process for treatment of Produced Water and Frac Flowback from the oil and gas exploration industry. The new innovation is the use of CeraMem® ceramic membranes to streamline the pretreatment processes ahead of the RO and reduce the system footprint. OPUS II can be delivered in modular, containerized units to minimize installation costs. Like the original OPUS technology, OPUS II effectively removes silica, organics, hardness, boron, strontium and particulates. It generates high quality effluent at a high recovery rate, providing clean water for discharge, recycle or reuse.
HOW IT WORKS
OPUS® II technology incorporates free oil removal, CeraMem® ceramic membranes, ion exchange softening, and reverse osmosis processes. The process begins with a series of reaction tanks followed by a crystallization tank fitted with our patented Turbomix® technology. The thorough mixing of the Turbomix facilitates precipitation of hardness and metals in the feed water, as well as crystallization of the solids generated by precipitation.
The water and solids then enter the CeraMem membrane ultrafiltration system operated in a cross-flow mode. The solids separated by the membranes are continuously recycled to the crystallization tank and purged intermittently for dewatering. In excess alkalinity applications, a degasification step can be added to ahead of the CeraMem process to reduce chemical demand and sludge generation.
The CeraMem filtrate is then treated with ion exchange softening using a Weak Acid Cation (WAC) resin in sodium form to further remove hardness and metals to lower concentrations, without pH adjustment. The pretreated water is pressurized through the RO operated at an elevated pH in single or double pass mode for removal of TDS, boron, strontium and organics.
On-site pilot-scale testing is available to optimize the process for your wastewater characteristics. The pilot testing enables us to provide a process guarantee for your full-scale system.
Benefits
- Small footprint
- Containerized, modular configuration
- Low capital and operation costs
- High salt rejection
- Fewer treatment steps than comparable options
- High water recovery rate / low waste volume
- Reliable process with minimal downtime
- Handles feed water variability
- Effective scaling / fouling control
- Continuous clean-in-place process