Water management

Zero-Liquid-Discharge, Zero-Mineral-Discharge Process Recovers Water, Extracts Salts

This paper demonstrates that high-purity salts of calcium, magnesium, strontium, sodium, and lithium can be recovered from produced-water brine using a chemical-reaction pathway followed by vacuum-driven crystallization and a lithium-extraction process.

Fig. 1—Schematic demonstrating the advantages of the zero-mineral-discharge/ZLD process.
Fig. 1—Schematic demonstrating the advantages of the zero-mineral-discharge/ZLD process.
Source: SPE 225181.

The zero-liquid-discharge (ZLD) approach is a clean technology for valorizing low-salinity brines such as seawater using desalination reverse-osmosis (RO) plants. A key aspect is calcium removal and recovery to avoid scaling problems in successive advanced separation units for recovering other valuable salts. Most current technology relies on discarding some salts while recovering others. In this paper, a systematic process is proposed by which all the salts of sodium, calcium, magnesium, strontium, and lithium can be recovered in their highest purity from produced-water brines from oil wells with very high salinity.

Problem Statement

While current wastewater-reclamation and -minimization technologies are effective, they demand high energy consumption.

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