Circular Model for E&P: Production Sand Conversion to Nanosilica and Hierarchical Zeolites

Abstract As part of circular model for E&P, production sand waste from oil production process will be converted to new high value-added product, called "Nanosilica", and "Hierarchical Zeolites". This is beneficial in terms of lower amount of production sand waste disposal to landfill. There are three main steps for sand conversion to nanosilica and hierarchical zeolites which compose of1) Sand Pre-treatment, 2) Nanosilica Extraction, and 3) Hierarchical Zeolite Synthesis. In the first step of Sand Pre-treatment process, production sand was pretreated by using water and acid washing 3M HCl, follow by calcination. Secondly, pretreated sand will be extracted to obtain nanosilica by boiling pretreated sand with 3M NaOH solution to get sodium silicate, and finally adding HCl to precipitate nanosilica. Finally, the extracted nanosilica will be further reacted with Structure Directing Agent (SDA); zeolite template, under hydrothermal treatment process for crystallization of Hierarchical Zeolites. Nanosilica extracted from production sand contain high specific surface area around 200 – 600 m2/g, with small particle size less than 50 nm. Nanosilica can be applied in many applications such as Gas separation, Adsorption, Catalysis, Ion-exchange, and Detergent. Hierarchical Zeolites with nanosheets morphology obtain many niche characteristics to overcome the limitation of conventional zeolites in terms of, 1) good mass transportation through active sites due to their microporous structure improvement, 2) high surface area, and 3) longer catalyst lifetime. Hierarchical Zeolites is popularly used in wide range of applications such as separation, ion-exchange to catalysis. Two most popular Hierarchical Zeolites nanosheet ZSM-5, and Faujasite (FAU) topologies have been developed in this work. The physicochemical properties were compared with the one synthesized using the commercial chemical grade of silica sources. The results show that the nanosilica from production sand can be achievable for Hierarchical Zeolites synthesis, by comparing the physicochemical properties such as surface area, porosity, topology, and textural properties with the one obtained using the commercial silica sources. Hierarchical zeolites from production sand waste are initiated in PTTEP as part of Circular Model for E&P. The synthesized hierarchical zeolites from this project will be further possibly applied in-house in PTTEP as the moisture adsorbent in instrument air, or moisture in condensate. This would help company for reduce OPEX cost. From these preliminary findings, all information will be further applied to the process design of in prototype, and scale-up phase.