OPTIMIZATION OF MICROFILTRATION MEMBRANE CLEANING PROCESS IN PRODUCED WATER TREATMENT

Abstract

Produced water is contaminated water that is extracted together with the oil in oil production operations. Produced water is a mixture of organic and inorganic material. To remove dispersed oil in produced water can use membrane technology, especially microfiltration membrane. The use of membrane filtration in produced water process can be cause fouling in membrane. Fouling is a process resulting in loss of performance of a membrane due to deposition of suspended or dissolved. One of way to treat fouling in membrane is cleaning process. This research investigates the use of microfiltration membrane in produced water treatment and its cleaning process. The purposes of this research are to determine microfiltration membrane cleaning effect of produced water using NaOH as cleaning solution, to determine concentration effect of chemical cleaning agent in membrane cleaning process as well as to determine cleaning period effect of membrane cleaning process. This research used NaOH as cleaning solution. It will be determined the effectiveness of cleaning used NaOH solution. Concentration variables are: 0.1%, 0.3% and 0.5%. Moreover the cleaning period variables are 15 minutes and 30 minutes. Analysis procedure was done by determine the recovery flux permeat of process. According to the results previously analyzed, the following conclusions can be stated: NaOH gives satisfied effectiveness in microfiltration membrane cleaning process. In this research, we use NaOH as cleaning agent for removing the organic fouling caused by produced water. The NaOH concentration as cleaning agent which increases the flux highest is 0.1% NaOH and cleaning period 15 minutes. In this condition, the flux increase about 66.66% in first cleaning and 35.27% in second cleaning.