Potential fouling resistant coating materials synthesized by UV induced polymerization

Produced water is the single largest waste stream in oil and gas production, often containing salts, heavy metals, emulsified oil, and other organics. If the organic content and salinity of produced water could be reduced to acceptable limits, produced water could represent a potential new water source with a wide variety of uses. A study was carried out to examine potential fouling-reducing coating materials and determined fundamental structure/property relationships governing water transport, rejection of model foulants,, e.g., emulsified oil droplets or protein aggregates, and fouling characteristics. A systematic series of hydrogel-based polymers was prepared, and their permeation and fouling properties were studied and correlated with their structure. The oil rejection was ∼ 97% in all samples, while the protein rejection depended on the prepolymer water content, crosslinker concentration, and UV intensity. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the 2007 AIChE Annual Meeting (Salt Lake City, UT 11/4-9/2007).