Water Standard - Reverse Osmosis (RO) and Nanofiltration (NF) Technology

Reverse OsmosisReverse osmosis technology has been used since the 1970’s for removal of dissolved solids (salts) from water. A typical RO systems consist of feed pumps and RO membrane units, and in some cases energy recovery. The feed pumps and energy recovery work to provide the necessary pressure to push water through the membranes.Water Standard utilizes state-of-the-art RO technology and selects the specific RO membrane type and model as a function of individual project needs. As a component of the C-H2Ocean Spectrum™ technology, Water Standard has recently completed pilot testing of high flow RO membranes which operate at flux rates of 50-80% greater than conventional RO technology, thereby reducing the footprint and weight of an offshore RO system accordingly. To learn more about Water Standard’s High Flow RO testing.

Similar to RO, nanofiltration is a membrane process in which water is forced through a semipermeable membrane under pressure. The membrane restricts passage of dissolved substances such as calcium, sulphate, magnesium, etc. Unlike RO membranes, NF membranes are specially designed to reject divalent ions (calcium, magnesium, sulphate) more effectively than monovalent ions (sodium, potassium, chloride). This allows salinity to pass through the membrane into the permeate, while softening the water and removing sulphate.

NF technology is used for waterflooding in SRP applications to remove sulphate, and more recently in low salinity and chemical EOR applications in which some salinity is needed in the injection water, coupled with low hardness (note some floods may benefit from higher hardness levels to address clay swelling).

Water Standard has pioneered new NF technologies for the waterflood market, allowing fine-tuning of injection water quality to provide an extraordinary range of salinity, hardness and sulphate levels.