Aquatech announced on 4 April 2012 that it had been awarded a contract to construct a 237 m³/h produced-water softening plant for the Amal Steam Facilities Phase 1B in Oman.
The engineering-procurement contractor for this project was the Worley Parsons group, through Worley Parsons Oman Engineering LLC. The facility is owned by Petroleum Development Oman (PDO), the premier hydrocarbon exploration and production company in the country.
Aquatech will supply what it says is a unique ion-exchange based super softening plant for treating high TDS and high-temperature produced water. The treated water will be fed to the steam generators for producing steam to be injected into the heavy-oil wells to enhance the extraction rate of oil.
The technology involved will include a nutshell filtering unit, followed by a primary strong acid cation unit and a polishing strong acid cation unit, and finally by a weak acid cation unit. The end product will have hardness reduced to less than 1 ppm and will be used for process water.