If you asked the average man or woman on the street, he or she would be likely to tell you that oil and water don’t mix. Maybe they’d remember some high school science class experiment involving a beaker of water and a measure of salad oil, watching the tiny globules of yellow oil break up and gradually recombining.

You and I know that from drilling and production right through transportation, hydrocarbons and H2O are intimately connected in a wide variety of ways.

Two Demands, Two Dimensions
Although there’s nothing really simple about water, there are two readily definable demands in the energy sector.  First, potable water is needed in remote regions for both production use and safe consumption by crews and surrounding communities. In some parts of the world, the only water that can be used is salt water, where producers need potable water. Brine is a byproduct, processed to produce salt.

Second, produced water or wastewater has to be treated.  The demand for processing and improved safe disposal of drilling mud byproducts is ongoing. Contamination of surface- and ground-water resources, because of improper disposal of oilfield brines and other industrial high-chloride wastewaters has long been recognized as a major problem; effective treatment is a top priority.

There are two water “dimensions” as well: transportation and on-site availability. Getting fresh water to a site (or, if cost effective, removing contaminated water from a site) means some form of transportation. Pipelines – an area of exceptional expertise for EMS USA – offer one approach. The other is some readily deployable (say, modular) system of water and wastewater treatment: A subject at which we ought to take a closer look.

First though, examine some basics of water pipelines.

Water Pipelines as One Solution
According to one source*, only 2.4% of all the water on this planet is fresh water – and less than 1% of all freshwater is available for human use. There are a billion people who don’t have access to clean drinking water – and if you are drilling and producing in some remote locale, chances are better than even you don’t have access either.

Pipelines for water are easy for us to envision. Depending on what kind of hydrocarbon transportation you’re involved in, you can imagine the ability of large-diameter pipelines to connect a source (from deep inside the earth or surface water) to a specific area that lacks a continual and sustainable water source itself.

Pipelines can transfer water quickly and efficiently. There would be little or no loss due to the kind of evaporation that would occur via a canal or other open irrigation method.

And we (the industry) know how to build them, maintain them and monitor them, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  In fact, if it weren’t for a few major drawbacks, we could construct and sustain such aqua-transportation infrastructure readily.

However, we need to get the water from where it is to where we need it and construction is expensive. In fact, it may be more expensive on a mile-for-mile basis than a natural gas or oil pipeline, because of construction or environmental issues. There are issues that may surround the source of the water itself and its location relative to its place-of-use, especially those of ownership.

(What’s not at issue, from the EMS USA point of view, are the experience and capabilities needed to monitor such a transport system for safety and quality: What we do every day for hydrocarbon pipelines in terms of pipeline monitoring, remediation and pipeline integrity management – PIM – can be and is readily adapted to H2O transportation.)

Nevertheless, there is another approach, using on-site systems, that is worth examining. This approach extends water and wastewater treatment from established infrastructure capabilities to a specialized containerized concept that can be designed, manufactured and installed very quickly.

Modular Treatment Systems Offer Extended Opportunities
The use of modular units on offshore platforms is already well established. But water engineering and treatment doesn’t stop at the shore line.

The opportunity to deploy modularized water or wastewater treatment as a proven engineering solution is timely when we review the current state of crumbling infrastructures around the world.

Where wastewater treatment plants are beyond capacity and deteriorating, the modular system’s ability to retrofit into underground systems can provide municipalities with the answer they need to expand and treat their current systems; or deliver an on-the-spot solution to a local fresh water or wastewater treatment challenge that may appear at first glance to be unsolvable.

Purpose-built, skid-mounted water treatment modules, based on ISO containers, are already engineered and designed for applications virtually anywhere in the world. They offer a unique design that makes deployment easy. In fact, since the solution is a module, it offers a “satellite” solution that may offer a workaround to decayed infrastructure – or obviate the need for an infrastructure altogether.

Advanced Science…in a ISO Box
Does a modularized approach to, say, wastewater treatment, pass the “smell test?” Yes, a combination of dissolved-air flotation (called DAF) and sludge drying technology working inside the module provides for greater air dispersion and advanced retention time – which means maximum aerobic digestion that completely eliminates any odor.

In this sense, the modular wastewater treatment process is equivalent to an aquarium (without the fish). The resulting final treatment effluent meets international drinking water standards, including the US and the EU.

The same science and engineering disciplines go into treatment for potable water supplies – all based on ISO modules which can be expanded to fit the available space, application or demand. (Building the water treatment modules into ISO containers, isotainers, means they fit all ships, cranes and trucks for the easiest possible deployment anywhere in the world.)

Infrastructure into Aquastructure - Modularly
At least when it comes to adapting the knowledge and experience involved in creating, maintaining and managing such necessary systems, oil and water do mix.

We suggest that countries – or companies – with severe water treatment problems (or with extensive contamination) are prime targets for the modular water or wastewater treatment approach. Used in single or multiple modules, for example, potable water can then be sourced from streams, rivers or nearby lakes.  The system can be sized to fit the demand as well – from a single, well site module (for example) to growing villages and towns.
           
There’s an economic incentive that affects sustainability, too.

With time, oil in a beaker of water eventually separates, creating an invisible barrier between the layers. We have found that, after coming to understand the close interconnection of these two industries, it is time to shake things up again.