The first stage of a salt-leaching brine-filtration system at an underground liquid hydrocarbon storage facility in France has been completed by Amiad Filtration Systems. Performance testing and operation in real conditions is now under way.
The entire project – including initial studies, construction, installation and maintenance – is projected at a cost of € 6 million.
The underground facility consists of stored liquid hydrocarbons, including crude oil, gasoline and fuel, in 27 salt-leached caverns, and has a capacity of 7.5 million m³.
To create these underground caverns, it is necessary to filter salt-leaching brine down to 3 micron (300g/L of salt) and remove total suspended solids (TSS), to comply with the maximum 10mg/L of TSS content allowed for injection into the sea.
Features of the Amiad system include:
“This underground facility is one of the largest and most strategic oil reserves in France,” said Bruno Jauneaud, general manager of Amiad Europe. “We are very pleased to have been selected to provide the facility with our most advanced industrial self-cleaning filtration solution, which is designed to specifically meet the demanding needs of the oil and gas industry, a challenge that Amiad is uniquely qualified to overcome.”
This installation is the third significant brine-leaching application supplied by Amiad, and follows US installations at Pine Prairie Energy Center LLC in Louisiana and SG Resources Mississippi LLC in Mississippi.