A Review of Alternatives to Injection of Petroleum Wastewater from Oil and Gas Extraction

Petroleum refinery production wastewater is likely increasing the toxic contaminants in freshwater sources and contributing to freshwater scarcity despite regulatory guidelines, resulting in negative impacts to aquatic life, soil microbial communities, wildlife, and human communities With the predicted increase in global energy demands by 2030, to include increases in petroleum consumption and production up to 107 million barrels of crude oil per day; the negative environmental impact and freshwater dearth can also be expected to progressively worsen as petroleum refinery wastewater increases to between 42.8 – 171.2 million barrels per day. While regulatory guidelines provide some mitigating effects to environmental pollution by mandating contaminant thresholds for discharge to the environment or injection to aquifers; they do little to address water conservation or reclamation. A growing sense of urgency should accompany the exploration and implementation of alternatives to petroleum wastewater discharge to the environment or injection to aquifers to not only halt but perhaps begin to reverse this ascendant trend in environmental contamination and freshwater shortage. Advanced processes or technologies that we explored provided a range of contaminant removal efficiencies with some of the best demonstrating a chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal of > 90% or a dissolved organic carbon (DOC) removal of > 90% . The majority of the studies we reviewed were in the experimental phase and would require further.

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Kansas

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Sly, Mary E.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Vossoughi, Shapour

Statement dc:rights

• This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10945/65719

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:calhoun.nps.edu:10945/65719