Fate of Additive chemicals in the oil and gas processing industry

Additives are used in a variety of ways on an oil and gas facility to address operational issues with emulsions, to combat corrosion problems. Many of these chemicals are mixtures developed specifically for the processing fluid/type of water etc. Some of these additives are complex organic molecules and many have features which cause these to be water soluble.

Because many of these additives do not react, they will be carried through to any downstream processing stages and could potentially end up being disposed of into the environment. This is especially true for water soluble materials.

This project has several objectives:
1. To identify the types of chemicals that are used in the oil and gas, and related industries
2. To determine which of these is soluble in the organic or aqueous phases. This can be done by ether using suppliers data or by modeling with an appropriate thermodynamic tool.
3. To then investigate the fate of these chemicals
4. To establish the toxicity and environmental impact of these chemicals.

A deliverable would be an index system listing the chemicals typically used in oil and gas operations, and ranking these in terms of toxicity, cost, water/organic solubility. Such a database could then form part of a life cycle/impact assessment.