A novel electrochemical technique for mineral scale coverage and scaling tendency quantification

Abstract

Mineral scaling poses a far greater problem to any industry that uses or produces water. The quality of water used by industry varies widely and gives rise to numerous scaling problems. Mineral scale formation and deposition on equipment surface causes major flow assurance concerns particularly apparent in the offshore oil and gas industry. An improper of scale management programmes could lead to a rapid mineral scale build up and subsequently significant reductions in productivity and compromises the operational safety of process equipment (i.e. safety valves) as a result of blockage. The result is costly workovers increasing project operating costs (OPEX) due to the need for scale dissolver treatments and significant production losses. As part of scale management programme, it is desirable to be able to quantify the extent of the mineral scale that has deposited on component surface and also to be able to monitor the changes of likelihood that a production fluid will precipitate out mineral scale. The nature of this research is focus on exploring a simple approach or a methodology to detect the mineral scale formed specifically for calcium carbonate on the electrode surface. The application of a submerged impinging jet (SIJ) in conjunction with an electrochemical technique was developed. The development of this technique has been taken into the consideration of advantages and disadvantages of the current available scale detection techniques. Not only has the complexity of equipment and facilities been considered during the development stage, but the data interpretation of the existing technologies has been considered. In general, efforts have concentrated upon strategies to develop and to validate this methodology for the scale coverage on the electrode surface as well as monitoring the scaling tendency through the electrochemical technique measurement. Various verifications and experiments were undertaken to ensure the reliability of the use of electrochemical measurement and SIJ geometry configurations. The influence of surface condition on the sensitivity of this technique were also assessed This technique clearly demonstrated that various levels of mineral deposition on the surface could be quantified. This included the calcium carbonate deposition in the presence and absence of magnesium ions. In this study, a similar SIJ set up configuration was used for scaling tendency measurement to quantify and predict whether scaling will occur in water or brine solution. The scaling tendency results illustrated that there was a good correlation between the saturation ratio and the scaling tendency slope measurement by an electrochemical analysis. The contribution main of this research contributes to a better understanding of the used of SIJ for scale detection, monitoring and quantification of calcium carbonate scale formation.