Upstream Injection Water & Sulphate Removal Unit (SRU)

It’s crucial to manage the quality of water used in Upstream Oil and Gas production. It is expected to meet specific water quality standards. Our Sulfate removal from water unit application supports the low sulfate water for injection.

Contamination can cause injection and disposal well plugging or environmental violations. Our liquid particle filters remove contaminant particles from a fluid stream to prevent excessive pump wear, heat exchanger fouling, and contactor foaming. Our injection water treatment solution is a crucial part of maintaining well performance.

A new oil well produces oil from the oil-bearing porous rock formation via the natural reservoir pressure, a phase known as primary production. This will drive oil production until about 30% of the original oil in place is recovered.  Next, secondary production utilizing waterflood injection is commonly used to recover up to approximately 60% of the original oil in place. The injected water repressurizes the formation, re-establishing the driving force to produce used during most of the primary production phase. It also pushes or "sweeps" the oil towards the producing wells to improve production from the reservoir overall. 

Oil exists in the porous rock of varying permeability, a measure of the openness of the rock to flow.  Formations with smaller spaces between the rock granules are said to be ‘tighter’ formations, having a lower permeability rating as measured in milliDarcys.  The smaller spaces of a tighter formation act as a fine filter, trapping any fine particulate present in the injection water.  As the formation fouls with solids, it becomes more difficult to inject the water, leading to a decline in oil production. Wells can be worked over or stimulated, where they are taken offline and subjected to acidizing or high-pressure fracturing to re-establish flow.  These operations cost millions of dollars, resulting in lost downtime, and may not fully recover the damage done, permanently reducing the well’s production ability.

A rule of thumb has been developed to avoid formation plugging. The injection water should be filtered to a micron level equal to 1/3 to 1/7 the square root of the permeability in milliDarcys. For example, under these guidelines, to protect a tight 100 milliDary formation, the injection water should be filtered to between 1.4 and 3 microns.

High-efficiency injection water filtration is required to achieve this level of performance. Our absolute/Beta-rated filters are well suited to this type of need.  For coarser formations, a range of nominal or absolute-rated filters are available to optimize oil production, reduce workover costs and achieve controlled filtration costs.

Our Ultipleat® High Flow Filter is a large diameter, coreless, single open-ended, pleated cartridge with an inside-to-outside flow pattern. The filter's unique crescent-shaped pleat geometry, combined with its large 152.4 mm (6 inches) diameter and proprietary range of available Pall filter media, allows the use of significantly fewer filters and smaller housings for high flow rate applications. Systems can handle up to 115,443 lpm (30,500 gpm).

To achieve the cleanest injection water to meet your requirements, we provide a wide range of injection water filtration solutions through to retrofit element styles depending on your current filtration equipment availability and needs.