Danish company LiqTech International Inc announced on 5 November 2012 that it has entered into a close cooperation agreement with Constructora Conconcreto South America following a successful 12-month trial period with LiqTech’s ceramic membranes for water filtration in the oil and gas industry.
Medellín-based Conconcreto has been actively working to validate the LiqTech silicon carbide (SiC) ceramic membrane technology for the oil and gas industry during the past 12 months and has successfully concluded field trials with Hocol (a subsidiary of Ecopetrol) in Colombia.
The trial period was followed by a commercial agreement between Conconcreto and Hocol for operation of a SiC membrane installation for produced water treatment, marking the commercial breakthrough for this market. Conconcreto is currently certifying LiqTech’s membranes with INTEVEP for the oil and gas market in Venezuela.
The field trials included replacing flotation units and walnut shell filters for polishing of produced water for re-injection purpose. The SiC membranes were operated upstream and downstream of a skimmer unit and both operations showed remarkable performance.
Typical membrane feed water with oil concentration of 20-100 ppm was consistently treated to <5 ppm oil in water for re-injection purpose (95% of the time below 0.7 ppm oil in water). The production capacity per unit membrane surface area was in the range 200-350 L/m².h when operating prior to a skimmer unit and even 400-600 L/m².h when operating downstream of the skimmer unit.