Sustainable Ion-Exchange Resins for Produced Water Treatment

AbstractProduced water is by far the largest by product by volume associated with oil and gas production. To minimize environmental impact of the produced water disposal, reuse produced water, and fulfill the targeted Zero-Liquid-Discharge approach, it is necessary to develop new economically viable technologies for water purification. The objectives of the research enclose development of the sustainable ion-exchange resin from the discarded expanded polystyrene via a multi-stage process with plasma treatment.The process of sustainable ion-exchange resins’ preparation includes several consecutive steps. At first, a polystyrene waste is collected and dissolved in an organic solvent.After that the polymeric beads are prepared using a microdroplet precipitation mechanism. Then, one part of the polystyrene beads is modified with the green gas-liquid interfacial plasma (GLIP) sulfonation process producing a strong acidic cation exchange resin. The other part is functionalized by amine groups in cyclopropylamine medium producing strong basic anion exchange resin.Robust and self-sustained process for creating the polystyrene beads was developedusing the «solvent-non-solvent» system. The bead formation process is realized by a controlled, laminar liquid jet broken into equally sized beads by vibrations at optimized frequency value. This process was performed using the in-house state-of-the-art encapsulator instrument. The concentration of waste expanded polystyrene and a filler in a solution was optimized. The size of obtained porous beads was measure around 750-1000 micron and can be controlled by the nozzle size and frequency of vibration.The research describes a new method of sustainable ion-exchange resin creation. The utilization of this novel material is a beneficial approach to re-use plastic waste and reuse it to clean produced water from dissolved salts. Moreover, plasma technology that is used for polystyrene treatment is probably the most versatile surface treatment technique and, moreover, it is environmentally friendly.