“Increasingly, oil producers in Alberta are choosing to go with evaporation technology as the treatment method for reusing/recycling their produced water in thermal SAGD process because it offers a variety of benefits including higher water recovery rates (lower make-up/reduced blow down), smaller footprint, and easier operability. However, managing scaling has been a challenge with evaporation technology. Aquatech’s HEVAP evaporative process addresses this issue as it has been engineered to operate in a scale-free environment while also providing other process advantages to oil producers,” said Alan R. Daza, P.Eng., vice-president of Sales & Business Development for Aquatech’s Infrastructure and Major Projects division.The HEVAP evaporative process pre-conditions the feedwater by incorporating a softening step combined with additional conditioning of the feedwater prior to treatment by the evaporators. This process provides the evaporators with essentially a scale free environment in which to operate. Other advantages, which help lower operating expense (OPEX) and life cycle costs (LCC), include: high allowable concentration factors; increased recovery of high quality reusable water; no requirement for anti-scalants; no requirement for EDTA dosing; and no requirement for mechanical cleaning.“The HEVAP evaporative process significantly increases the level of operational reliability and availability, both of which are important requirements in any SAGD facility. As a result, we believe that this type of system offers great potential in the oil sands market,” said Alan Daza.
