Publications

Management of produced water from the upstream oil production is largely a challenge to most operators of oil production blocks everywhere. The formation water lifted to the surface would vary in chemical and physical properties depending on geological characteristics of the reservoir. Produced water may contain trace concentration of undesirable compounds while possessing physical properties which cannot meet intended quality standard including Government requirement for discharge from onshore facility.Kondur Petroleum S.A. (Kondur) produced water especially from Kurau field have high temperature up to 80 C with high daily discharge rate. This presents a challenge to reduce the temperature down to acceptable level. The challenge is due to the engineering of a heat transfer facility, which had never been built for treating enormous rate of produced water, and due to the amount of energy to reduce the temperature as well.Further study to observe the effect of temperature of produced water in the marine environment was essential. Direct measurement of temperature in the mixing zone of produced water in the Lalang Strait was done by Kondur in 2010. A 3D hydrodynamics model was also utilized to observe the dispersion of high initial temperature of produced water discharged to the marine environment.The 3D hydrodynamics model computed the main factors, which affecting the dynamics of Lalang Strait waters such as tidal current, wind and sea water density and created a hydrodynamics model. This 3D hydrodynamics model was developed by Dr. Muslim Muin (LAPI-ITB, 2005), which utilizes non-orthogonal boundary fitted curvilinear technique. This technique can accurately simulate water movement in geometrically complex water such as the Lalang Strait. The model had been validated by direct measurement of temperature in the mixing zone. Both the result of direct measurement and the simulation demonstrated that high initial temperature of produced water almost instantly dispersed in the mixing zone. The highest increase of temperature directly measured in the mixing zone was 1.6 C above the ambient while the simulation shows the highest temperature increase was 1.4 C above the ambient. The effect of temperature was in conformance with Government Standard for sea water quality, which allows changes of temperature up to 2 C from the ambient temperature.