Approximately 80% of the oil sands in Alberta cannot be open pit mined because the bitumen is buried too deep below the surface and therefore must be recovered via in-situ methods. Filterboxx’s de-oiling and GE’s produced water evaporation technologies achieve significantly higher recoveries of the produced water, resulting in 30-50% less makeup water required for the SAGD process, depending on reservoir losses and other technical limitations. By working together GE and FilterBoxx will develop products which will greatly reduce exposure to the risks commonly associated with SAGD produced water treatment.
Kevin Slough, CEO of FilterBoxx said: “FilterBoxx is very excited to be teaming with GE to offer a complete package to treat produced water from thermal heavy oil operations. FilterBoxx technology allows for de-oiling at high temperatures, which makes it a perfect match with GE’s evaporator technology to provide an end-to-end produced water treatment system.”
