Suppression of Sulphur-Reducing Bacteria in Formation Water by Sonoplasma Treatment

In petroleum production processes, the water used to maintain formation pressure often plays a key role and is pumped into injection wells to compensate for the pressure drop in the formation after oil extraction and displacement of the remaining petroleum products to the development well. The source of such water may be produced by waters extracted together with oil and previously purified from mechanical impurities and hydrocarbons. However, a significant disadvantage of using such water is the presence of pollutants such as sulphur-reducing bacteria (SRB) and a high content of hydrogen sulfide. Traditional purification methods against them show low efficiency. Hydrogen sulfide and SRB are not only a threat of environmental pollution, but they also pose a high risk to pipelines in the petroleum industry due to an increase in the rate of metal corrosion. In this paper, formation water was treated with a field deployment flow-mode plasma discharge unit. A significant decrease in the growth rate of SRB in treated water was achieved. Bacterial growth was suppressed for up to 14 days after three treatment cycles of treatment. The hydrogen sulfide content was reduced by 33% after one cycle of plasma discharge water treatment.