Apparatus, systems and methods for management of raw water and emissions utilizing heat and/or pressure energy within combustion gas sources

Abstract

The invention relates to methods, systems and apparatus for distributed management of raw water and internal combustion engine (ICE) gas emissions generated during industrial operations. One aspect of the invention at least partially utilizes a hot gas air knife to increase or partially increase surface area between a raw water and a hot gas in order to vaporize a proportion of the aqueous phase of the raw water and concentrate contaminants within a residual raw water concentrate. The water vapor generated by the vaporization process may be demisted, discharged directly to the atmosphere or alternatively condensed and captured for use. Another aspect relates to how the liquids and gasses interact to continuously flush the surfaces of the system which may help mitigate scaling issues. The invention may help facilitate rapid transfer of ICE combustion gas particulate and ICE combustion gas chemicals onto and into the raw water as it concentrates.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0001]The invention relates to methods, systems and apparatus for distributed management of raw water, heat energy within combustion gas and internal combustion engine (ICE) gas heat and pressure generated during industrial operations. Such operations include but are not limited to oilfield drilling, completions and production operations with mobile, semi-permanent and / or permanent processing units. One primary aspect of the invention provides a compact, in-line, all-in-one concentrator, vaporizer, demister, and muffler apparatus. The apparatus can be configured in various embodiments and can provide various advantages to operators seeking to vaporize raw water and / or concentrate contaminants within raw water using waste heat and pressure from such operations including ICE's and other sources. These advantages can include:[0002]a. minimal new energy input over and above a primary heat source such as an ICE, combustion gas, flare gas or other similar source;[000...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0053]In another embodiment, the invention provides a raw water vaporization system (RWVS) comprising: a shearing chamber having: an exhaust connector for connecting the shearing chamber to the engine exhaust source and for introducing engine exhaust under positive pressure into the shearing chamber wherein the positive pressure is derived as a prime or secondary energy input from the operation of the associated engine; the shearing chamber containing a raw water influx system operatively positioned adjacent the exhaust connector to enable rapid interaction between input raw water and engine exhaust for i) increasing interfacial surface area between the input raw water and the engine exhaust gas and ii) rapid heat transfer between the input raw water and the engine exhaust to effect vaporization of water from the raw water and the concentration of raw water contaminants.

[0136]Regarding controlling or adjusting the air knife, the air knife can be controlled actively or passively. Active control may use a control system with an actuator configured to adjust the air knife based on one or more of user input or sensed variables such as temperature or pressure. Passive control may be implemented by the air knife being spring loaded (or manually set in increments) to manage itself based on backpressure. That is, the back pressure itself may act on the spring to open or close off (or otherwise modify) the cross-sectional opening of the air knife exit orifice. This modulating of cross-sectional orifice in response to gas flow fluctuations and pressure, permits the velocity of the gas being delivered to the vaporization chamber to remain within a narrower band resulting in more predictable gas / water mixing behaviour.

Problems solved by technology

While larger particles are generally easily removed, finer particles can become increasingly problematic within the concentrating solutions as viscosity increases and increasingly larger particles may become suspended in the solution and can lead to scaling and / or plugging of lines.

In other words, heretofore there has been no incentive for mobile treatment of flue gasses on remote or stranded drilling sites because there are local and national exemptions to standard air emission regulations on oil and gas drilling sites related to diesel engine exhaust volume and concentration of discharge within relatively short timeframes.

The byproduct of the combustion heat utilized by these systems is a low grade heat that is no longer economically usable by current heat exchange technology and which is vented to atmosphere using large chimney stacks.

As one example a 50 MW Steam Generator may have a 2-3 meter diameter flue stack, downstream of an economizer, which releases flue gas to atmosphere with an approximate temperature of 150° C.-200° C. Drawbacks of prior art systems are an inability to utilize this low grade heat.

Drawbacks to other prior art systems is they have to bring the heat from 30+ meters up a flue stack to ground level for processing, and by doing so lose more heat.

These latter systems although described as compact are not light nor compact enough satellite installation at the top of the flue stack.

Further, even if prior art systems were light and compact, they are prone scale buildup within their systems, requiring ground level operator access for ongoing cleaning and maintenance, which results in ongoing, undesirable operational expense.

As can be seen from Table 1, in many cases as an engine becomes larger it is generally less able to tolerate significant backpressure.

Additionally, as a result of the focus of US '844 on land fill gas waste heat utilization with no or little associated positive pressure, there is no teaching of using the positive pressure within engine exhaust gas to at least partially atomize, shear or break droplets as a means for interfacial surface area generation.

Regarding the latter, a drawback to this system is that new energy input is required, at a cost, in order to shear and mix water with a heat source.

Substantial drawbacks to various US '844 systems are the described requirement for cleaning and maintenance of scale and salt deposits due to many wet / dry surfaces within the system.

These drawbacks are also associated with a cyclonic demister whose inlet is tangential rather than concentric in that within the cyclone there are substantial dry surfaces that buildup scale, salts, etc. and require much maintenance and cleaning.

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