Use of membrane technology for oil field and refinery produced water treatment—A review

• The produced and refinery wastewater treatment by membrane technology is reviewed.
• The primary and secondary treatment of the treatment are discussed.
• Merits and limits of micro, ultra, nano filtration and RO are discussed.
• Use of FO and MD as potential futuristic technology is discussed.
• Gaps are identified and the future perspectives are proposed.

With the advent of modern drilling technology namely sand-tar, hydraulic fracturing and enhanced oil recovery, the amount of waste water to be treated before reuse and/or discharge to the environment has increased manifold in recent time. The treatment of produced water and refinery waste water from the oil industry has been traditionally done by physical as well as chemical processes. The use of membrane technology for the produced and refinery waste water treatment has been recent phenomenon and active research has been focused to enhance the efficiency and life time of the membrane during the operation of the waste water treatment. In this review we briefly focus on the produced and refinery waste water treatment by primary and secondary treatment in historical perspective followed by focusing on various membrane technologies starting from microfiltration (MF), ultrafiltration (UF), nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO). Finally we also focus on the membrane distillation (MD) in combination with forward osmosis (FO) as potential future technology.