Apparatus and Process For Treatment of Water

A method for treating produced water for steam generation, the method comprising:

• providing a source of produced water to be treated, the water having contaminants selected from the group of TOC and TDS as silica and hardness ions;
• passing the produced water through a screen to remove large particulates, generating a screened water stream;
• adjusting the pH of the produced water to a pH level from 7.2 to 11.5;
• removing at least a portion of the silica and hardness ions as suspended solids by subjecting the screened water stream to an electrocoagulation process employing sacrificial electrodes;
• removing at least a substantial portion of the suspended solids by at least one of floatation, sedimentation, filtering, centrifugation, settling, and combinations thereof, generating a pre-treated water;
• passed the pre-treated water to a filtration unit to remove at least 70% of the TOC from the pre-treated water for a reduced concentration of TOC;
• treating the pre-treated water having a reduced concentration of TOC in a direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) unit, thereby generating a steam-generation quality water having less than 10 mg/L TOC, less than 50 ppm silica, and less than 10 ppm hardness ions.