Reported by Staff

A field demonstration at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Rocky Mountain Oilfield Testing Center (RMOTC) near Midwest, Wyo. has successfully separated high percentages of methane from produced oil well water.

The test conducted at RMOTC with HyCap Energy/Fugitive Hydrocarbon Separation and Capture Technologies LLC of Gillette, Wyo. shows potential to capture valuable hydrocarbon resources from subsurface water while reducing fugitive emissions from coalbed methane (CBM) operations.

Gas left in produced water from CBM wells is not only a loss of potential revenue, but also creates maintenance costs to clear gas-locked lines and pumps, and requires extra treatment prior to release of the waste water to reduce fugitive greenhouse emissions. Measurements taken at existing CBM wells in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming indicate that current technology is between 75% and 98% efficient in separating the gas from the water.

The separator is a patent pending system which breaks the well production fluid into small droplets to facilitate the separation of entrained gases and lighter hydrocarbon liquids from the produced fluids. It does not have any moving parts and does not use electricity or require any external energy source to operate.

The HyCap separator unit exceeded expectations for methane separation and capture. The laboratory test results indicate that between 97 and 98 percent of the natural gas that was present in the flow of production water from both test wells was safely separated and captured. Gas monitoring during the tests showed the methane concentration was about 95 percent of the total gas volume. At the flow rates tested, the efficiency of this technology was comparable to the higher end of other separator equipment currently in use in CBM operations. In addition, 70% of the liquid hydrocarbons were also separated from the water stream. This added benefit could have applications in high water/oil ratio petroleum-related separation applications such as production and clean-up operations.

The technology shows promise for several areas of energy development including:

· Improving the efficiency of methane production in CBM wells

· Separation and capture of other volatile gases

· Cleanup of contaminated surface and ground water

RMOTC operates the NPR-3 oil field, historically known as Teapot Dome, as a federal field testing and demonstration site in support of national energy research and development goals with industry, academia and private inventor partners.