Investigating new techniques for the treatment of oil field produced water and energy production

In the oil and gas industry, the production of oil field produced water is a common problem, especially in ageing fields. The current solution to produce water treatment is to partially treat the produced water through chemical means. However, little effort was taken into consideration to generate electricity through the treatment process. A microbial fuel cell is a bioreactor that converts chemical energy in chemical bonds to electrical energy with the presence of microorganism acting as biocatalyst. With increasing cost of oil field produced water treatment and the raising environmental concerns of produce water disposal. Microbial fuel cells have been widely discussed as a suitable treatment method of oil field produced water as well as a method for generating power through electricity generation. This paper discusses the ability of microbial fuel cell in treating by the removal of chemical oxygen demand and generating electricity from untreated and partially treated oil field produced water. The various pre-treatment methods provide different environments to study the effectiveness of the microbial fuel cell in treating the produced water and generating electricity. In conclusion, microbial fuel cells are capable of treating oil field produced water while generating electricity. At the end of the experiment, it was found that partial treatment that preserves the oil and grease content of the produced water proved to give the best balance between treatment capability of microbial fuel cell and the electricity generated.