Two HTC Designed HWSB™s
The two HWSB™s at the left are in a central Texas oilfield production processing facility.  Each was designed for 12,000 barrels per day of total water throughput with up to 1,000 b/d of 28° API crude.  The installation crew did not equalize the all of the tanks in the battery with a common gas line, so the hydraulic imbalance caused overflows and upsets until HTC was called in to troubleshoot the system and discovered the improper piping installation.  Once corrected, the system works perfectly, as designed.

Three HTC Designed FRP HWSB™s
The three HWSB™s at the left are in a natural gas production processing facility in western Colorado.  Each was designed for 15,000 barrels per day of total water throughput with up to 1,500 b/d of 54° API natural gas condensate.  The injection of methanol to prevent flow line freezing complicates the separation process, since methanol is soluble in both water and oil, creating a nasty emulsion.  Nevertheless, these HWSB™s separate and dehydrate the condensate emulsion and produce water with <30 ppm oil carryover.

Five HTC Designed Steel Emulsion Working Tanks
This operator needed a safe and efficient way to dehydrate difficult paraffinic-mutual solvent based emulsions.  Tank firetubes were too dangerous, so a Therminal heater was used to heat and circulate 400°F heat transfer oil through internal coils in each tank.  The tanks were insulated to conserve heating energy in this cold weather application.  Tank mixers can be seen with the motors and drive shafts installed through the tank sides in each tank.  These mixers allow for the efficient, uniform heating and chemical distribution during treatment of the difficult emulsion.  As the temperature approaches 120°F the operator adds a demulsifying chemical and starts the mixer, which is prevented from running if the tank level is too low.  After an hour of mixing at temperature, the mixers are turned off and the emulsion allowed to resolve itself.

An HTC Designed FRP HWSB™ w/ Adjustable Water Leg
This HWSB™ with its outside adjustable water leg (siphon) was installed in a field where a secondary recovery project is under way.  The connate water is quite high in salinity whereas the injection water is not.  This creates a challenging operating condition wherein interface levels can change frequently, demanding that the spillover tubes in the water legs be easily adjusted so the system can operate properly.
The adjustment mechanism can be seen on top of the water leg in this photo.  HTC designed the water outlet piping so the water leg could be placed adjacent to the API walkway for operator convenience.  When adjustments or fine tuning is necessary, it’s now a 5 minute chore, without man-lifts or safety issues.

HTC Designed FRP HWSB™ Feeds a Surge Tank
This central Oklahoma water injection plant was re-designed by HTC to avoid problems with injection well plugging.  Injection water is a combination of connate water and make-up water from another zone.  This make-up water source was selected because compatibility issues are minimal.  Additionally, slop oils and emulsions from surrounding leases are hauled to his location for resolution.  The emulsion is processed through this Gunbarrel and separated water is comingled with the produced and make-up waters.  While the separation efficiency of all oils and the suspended solids is quite high, with less than 30 ppmv oil going to the injection facilities, HTC added a charge pump to extend the life of the high pressure horizontal multi-stage centrifugal injection pump, and added a filtration system between the charge pump and the HP pump to eliminate injection well plugging.

HTC Called on to Resolve a Foundation Problem
In this situation a tank battery had been set on fresh fill.  The need to get the new battery in service precluded the desire to properly compact the fill, and install suitable foundations for each new tank.  Over time the fill, mostly clay, began to shift under the weight of the tanks and because of heavy, clay-saturating rains.  As the clay swelled and shifted, the tanks began to move.  Interconnecting piping was stressed to the breaking point.
HTC was called in to identify and resolve the problem with the initial emphasis on creating a stable foundation for the HWSB™ gunbarrel.  HTC designed a suitable foundation.  Here, a hydraulic post hole machine digs down to bedrock.

There’s More to Process Design than Pure Theory
HTC discovered decades ago that theoretical separation calculations do not always result in successful process designs.  So, whenever a design project has a questionable set of design specifications, or the fluid characteristics seem unusual, HTC requires samples of the water and oil to be processed.  The sample to the left was requested because this PEMEX was light oil, heavy salt water application where reportedly it was not as easy to separate to two fluids as one might expect.  It was also not obvious why.  The sample revealed that the water was nearly fresh, the crude was quite foamy, and that there is a considerable concentration of emulsifier in the water.  Notice how cloudy the water is, and how foamy the oil is.

HWSB™ Designed for Gravity Flow
In many production processing facilities pressure vessels operate at sufficiently high pressure to move their effluent fluids downstream to the next process or storage vessel.  When process separation is accomplished at atmospheric pressure we must depend on proper hydraulics to accomplish large volume fluid flow from “A” to “B”, or we must use pumps.  Centrifugal pumps are a standard, but they also have significant shearing characteristics.  Shearing droplets results in poor separation, so the use of these pumps should be and often is avoided.  This make the emphasis on fluid elevation and proper line sizing critical to the facility design.  In this picture we see an HWSB™ on a 10’ high concrete stand to accomplish gravity flow.

HTC Designs a MEGA Flowback Water Plant
This client was producing nearly 30,000 b/d of total fluid at instantaneous rates exceeding 50,000 b/d.  Separation efficiency was unacceptable.  HTC was called in to re-design the water treatment plant, and the associated oil treatment, emulsion rectification/reclamation, and storage facility.  The entire plant was designed for gravity flow to avoid the use of pumps.  Three HWSB™ Skim Tanks remove the natural gas condensate liquids and polish the water.  Oil flows directly to sales oil tankage.  Emulsions flow to a dedicated emulsion preprocessing plant where emulsions are resolved using heat supplied by hot Therminal circulated through heat-transfer coils. 

HTC Challenged TO Retrofit an Old API Gunbarrel
After an economic study it became clear that a field retrofit in this central US production operation made sense.  HTC designed the internals and coordinated the field work to retrofit an older API Gunbarrel with HWSB™ internals to reduce oil carryover and put more oil in the sales tanks.  Here you can see that the hydraulic crane has already set the internals in the old tank bottom, and is lifting the new upper section over them to render what was a 16’ high API° Gunbarrel a new 24’ high HWSB™.

HTC Provides foundation Civil Engineering & Design
With over $3000/day of oil production in jeopardy, HTC was asked to fast-track a “fix” for the foundation issues described above.  HTC’s civil department developed a foundation design that included reinforced piers set in bedrock, with reinforcing tied to a grid of rebar in the new tank foundation, anchoring the foundation to the bedrock to prevent any further sagging or settling. 
In this photo you can see the tank ring and foundation rebar tied to the eight 30” reinforced pillars set to down to bedrock. 

HTC Supervises the Foundation Pour
HTC was asked to supervise this foundation retrofit project from beginning to end.  Here the final pour is being made using 4000# concrete.
The pour was completed in two hours, and the foundation surface screeded and troweled to a mirror finish.  Then it was allowed to completely cure before the tilting HWSB™ Gunbarrel was finally slid over onto its new stable foundation and re-piped.  The whole process took about three weeks, and was done with a minimal of downtime.