Mineral scaling poses a far greater problem to any industry that uses or produces water.
The quality of water used by industry varies widely and gives rise to numerous scaling
problems. Mineral scale formation and deposition on equipment surface causes major
flow assurance concerns particularly apparent in the offshore oil and gas industry. An
improper of scale management programmes could lead to a rapid mineral scale build up
and subsequently significant reductions in productivity and compromises the
operational safety of process equipment (i.e. safety valves) as a result of blockage.
The result is costly workovers increasing project operating costs (OPEX) due to the
need for scale dissolver treatments and significant production losses. As part of scale
management programme, it is desirable to be able to quantify the extent of the mineral
scale that has deposited on component surface and also to be able to monitor the
changes of likelihood that a production fluid will precipitate out mineral scale.
The nature of this research is focus on exploring a simple approach or a methodology to
detect the mineral scale formed specifically for calcium carbonate on the electrode
surface. The application of a submerged impinging jet (SIJ) in conjunction with an
electrochemical technique was developed. The development of this technique has been
taken into the consideration of advantages and disadvantages of the current available
scale detection techniques. Not only has the complexity of equipment and facilities
been considered during the development stage, but the data interpretation of the existing
technologies has been considered.
In general, efforts have concentrated upon strategies to develop and to validate this
methodology for the scale coverage on the electrode surface as well as monitoring the
scaling tendency through the electrochemical technique measurement. Various
verifications and experiments were undertaken to ensure the reliability of the use of
electrochemical measurement and SIJ geometry configurations. The influence of
surface condition on the sensitivity of this technique were also assessed
This technique clearly demonstrated that various levels of mineral deposition on the
surface could be quantified. This included the calcium carbonate deposition in the
presence and absence of magnesium ions. In this study, a similar SIJ set up
configuration was used for scaling tendency measurement to quantify and predict
whether scaling will occur in water or brine solution. The scaling tendency results
illustrated that there was a good correlation between the saturation ratio and the scaling
tendency slope measurement by an electrochemical analysis.
The contribution main of this research contributes to a better understanding of the used
of SIJ for scale detection, monitoring and quantification of calcium carbonate scale
formation
