Oil and Sediment Cut in Produced Water and Flowback

[mechanicalchad]

I am trying to develop a field sampling procedure that can be used to determine a representative oil and solid cut in a truck bringinging in produced water or flowback. It appears that most of the literature out there is to determine BS&W in oil in contrast to this where this is mostly salt water with oil and solids less than 10%. Is there any literature that might help in this applications? Specifically, how many samples to take and when, and then how to average the cuts to get a representative breakdown for that truck load.

At this point we take a sample at the beginning, middle, and end and then spin each sample in a desktop centrifuge to determine each samples cut. I have heard some people average the cuts from these samples, and I have also heard that some take two that are similar and average them, and throw out the third. Most of the oil is always on the top of the truck's tank and therefore both of these methods could give skewed results.

A push in the right direction would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Chad

 

[ScotchWhisky]

API Chapter 10 Section 3 & 4 might give you some information you can use

 

[mechanicalchad]

Thanks! I had a look through API MPMS 10.4 and there's some good stuff, but I don't think the sampling part will work for me.

I decided to take the three samples and interpolate for points in between using the Newton Divided Difference Method, and then for each of these interpolated points I figured out the volume and basically added them up along the curve to get the total oil, solids, and water. Given that I have three points the Newton method has some curvature to it which seems to get closer to what we'd expect in real life.