Read about the history and development of our popular waste water treatment units.
The first mechanical waste water treatment unit for the completion phase in the North Sea was installed by OTS A/S and operated by Baker Oil Tools onboard the Transocean Searcher operated by Statoil on the Åsgard field in early 2001. The idea was to come up with some mechanical separation to replace the flocculation and filtration process.
After using it for 8 wells, Statoil evaluated the result using the waste water treatment unit and proved that they with the new technology had an average saving of 2 million Nok for each well compared to the other technology used on previous wells.
By the end of the year 2001 OTS A/S was nominated for the chief executives HSE prize for 2001 in the Statoil system for the waste water treatment unit.
At the end of 2006 the cooperation and the contract between Baker Oil Tools and OTS A/S within waste water was closed. OTS A/S continued to improve the waste water system by installing one complete test unit on the washing bay area in Tananger to test and to optimize the system with different fluids. The experience gain from the washing bay was transferred to Pieralisi engineering department and into our new offshore units. The new system ended up being a large improvement from the 1st and 2nd generations units and now with new machines tailor made for the operation.
In 2010 OTS A/S started production on the new 3rd generation waste water treatment units for the Norwegian offshore marked. Today our unit has a good proven track record in the North Sea through different service companies and operators.
Through our company Scottech located in Perth in Australia we did a trial with one unit for 6 months for the Australian oil company Woodside. After the trial Woodside decided to keep the unit onboard the Atwood Eagle. Feedback so far is that this is an “excellent piece of equipment proving very good results”. Such feedback is very pleasant to receive, but also feedback from operators on day-to-day problems they meet during operation and maintenance of the units are more than welcome, so that we are able together to develop the system further.
In autumn 2020 the 4th generation of WWTU was ready for operation. Besides the increase in capacity, which is 100% more than previous generations, we have removed the conveyor and replaced it with a hopper pump. This reduces the need for crane operations to change out the mud skips when they are full. A tailor-made scroll in the decanter and an increase of G-force to remove more fines in the fluid are just some of the benefits with the 4th generation units.
During the FAT of the unit did, Neptune Energy contact us and asked if the unit could be used to treat flowback from wells on the Fenja field. The installation was done on the Deepsea Yantai with SLB and Expro. Neptune Energy was the first operator using the 4th generation WWTU. The operation was successful, and we continue to promote the 4th generation for treating wastewater in the North Sea area.
Today, in 2024 the 4th generation unit has a proven track record and is on numbers of rigs both in the Norwegian and UK sector. New units are continuously being built in our workshop in Tananger, Norway.
We are following the industry within OIW measurement closely, to see if they can produce an oil inline instrument which could measure all oils including aromate free base oils, so that we could include OIW measurements in the WWTU.
