In a “nutshell”, what are the two basic facts about nutshell filters?

Anyone with scant knowledge: (1) knows that the affinity to oil of nutshells is not only very weak (~2 pounds of suspended oil per cubic foot of media) but also weaker than that of sand, anthracite, and AC, thereby anticipated relatively ease of regeneration (by default) rises from this weakness; and (2) can readily determine their actual cost, which is in the order of $10 (not in the order of $1,300 to $10,000) per a barrel of produced water, and which reflects their actual worthiness (for water disposal or further treatment).

However, the very purpose of an improved or enhanced oil recovery method is to mobilize oil from an oil-bearing formation as a stable wet oil emulsion to an Oil Gathering Center (GC). Yet, the very purpose of the latter is to de-stabilize such a stable emulsion using a multitude of alternating and redundant oil-water separation steps and bulky equipment (Fig. on the left side).

It is then interesting to consider the logic of de-mixing oil and water phases directly simultaneously from produced stable wet oil emulsions. DESUL innovation is about minifying this subject (GC) and with a unity to which true opposites apply; a “both/and” (treatment of both stable and unstable wet oil emulsions) instead of an “either/or”. This innovation is like making a path through tall grasses, where there is originally no path.

But what if some end-users walk the same beaten path each time? What if the beaten path is using nutshell filters to remove suspended oil droplets from a water phase? What if a tailored cost of nutshell filters for a targeted end-user is extremely high?

If you think nutshell filters are the suitable beaten path, DESUL can build such filters without disposing of $0.65-1.0 billion of your funds to roughly treat effluent water that ends in disposal wells. DESUL can also combine them with our economic and cost-effective water de-oiling system to generate readily water for injection in oil-fields and the like without excessive expenditures.