Development of a non-invasive method for monitoring variations in salt concentrations of seawater using nuclear technique and Monte Carlo simulation

In the oil production industry, water is used as a fluid injected into the well to raise the oil when the well is depressurized. Water thus produced presents variations in the concentrations of dissolved salts, as there is a mixture of different types of water, related to its origin (such as connate water, sea water). Because it is reused in oil production, water needs to be monitored to maintain the standard suitable for its use as it can be hypersaline, contributing to the encrustation of pipes and contamination of underground water reservoirs. In this study, a noninvasive method was developed to determine the salt concentration in seawater. The method uses a detection system that contains a NaI(Tl) detector, a(241)Am source, and a sample holder to measure the mass attenuation coefficient of saltwater samples. For validation, the same setup was also simulated using the MCNPX code. Saltwater samples with different concentrations of NaCl and KBr were used as a proxy for seawater. The mass attenuation coefficients for the simulation exhibited the smallest relative errors (up to 6.2%), and the experimental ones exhibited the highest relative errors (up to 25%) when compared with theoretical values.

Automated summary

A noninvasive method was developed to determine the salt concentration in seawater in order to address the issue of water quality monitoring in oil fields.