Metrohm offers complete ion chromatography (IC) systems for monitoring ionic components in produced water.
Drilling for oil or gas holds many challenges, such as keeping pipes free of scale deposits.
Produced water is water trapped in underground reservoir rocks and is brought to surface along with the crude oil and gas.
Besides dispersed oil droplets and dissolved organic compounds, produced water mainly contains significant amounts of inorganic such as calcium, magnesium, barium and strontium, and anions such as carbonate, bromide and sulphate.
Precipitation of the corresponding salts often leads to the formation of scale deposits that can clog pipes.
For this reason it is of paramount importance to determine the inorganic constituents of produced water in order to choose the correct dosing of scale inhibitors.
While the anions bromide, sulphate, acetate and butyrate can be determined by suppressed conductivity detection, the cations magnesium, barium and strontium are determined by non-suppressed conductivity detection.
Of the numerous analytical techniques for the determination of ionic species, IC is the best suited in terms of selectivity, flexibility, automation and ruggedness.
