【Ten Years of Rapid Development in Chemical Engineering Equipment】Tests for lithium extraction and hydrogen production from the production water of China’s largest ultra-deep condensate gas field, the Bozi-Dabei gas field, were completed between 2023 and 2025

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This post was last edited by “Fish Swimming in the Desert” on May 17, 2025, at 09:50. Let’s give a thumbs up and encouragement to the achievements made in China’s chemical engineering technology and equipment. Your participation in the discussion serves as the greatest motivation! ********************** [Ten Years of Great Development in Chemical Engineering Equipment] This is a continuously updated compilation post; all are welcome to join the discussion: https://bbs.hcbbs.com/thread-3576046-1-1.html ***************** The trial test on lithium extraction from produced water and hydrogen production at China’s largest ultra-deep condensate gas field has been completed. On May 8, the Bozi-Dabei Gas Field—the largest ultra-deep condensate gas development and production base in China—successfully concluded a 22-day trial test involving electrolysis of produced water to produce hydrogen. This marks that Tarim Oilfield has overcome the technical bottlenecks related to treating produced water from oil and gas fields through technological innovation. It not only provides a brand-new solution for reducing treatment costs and enabling resource utilization of such water, but also paves the way for a “turning wastewater into energy” approach to promoting the green and low-carbon transformation of oil and gas fields. The Bozi-Dabei gas field is another trillion-cubic-meter-class gas field discovered in the Tarim Oil Field after the Kela-Keshen gas field; it is also one of the main sources of gas for the West-East Gas Pipeline Project and the pipeline networks serving the people in southern Xinjiang. In recent years, as gas fields have seen rapid production increases, the volume of water produced has risen significantly, reaching 3,700 cubic meters per day. The traditional water treatment method of \"gravity settling + oil removal + reinjection\" can no longer meet the requirements for environmental protection. “The treatment of produced water has always been a challenge in production, and traditional treatment methods are costly. Through technological innovation, the experimental project converts gas field production water into high-value new energy materials such as hydrogen and lithium, achieving a win-win situation in terms of economic and environmental benefits. ”Xu Qinglei, Secretary of the Party Committee of the New Energy Project Management Department at the Tarim Oilfield’s Southwest Tarim Exploration and Development Company, said. The experiment project on lithium extraction and hydrogen production from produced water involves feeding the highly polluted wastewater generated during oil and gas extraction into specific electrolyzers to carry out chemical reactions, thereby producing hydrogen that can be used in modern industry or as a fuel. At the same time, the brine extracted is concentrated during the electrolysis process, increasing the lithium concentration; subsequently, through lithium extraction processes, the core material for new energy batteries is produced. In November 2024, the Tarim Oilfield’s Tasixi South Exploration and Development Company collaborated with Southwest Petroleum University to carry out research on the electrolytic production of hydrogen and lithium extraction from gas field produced water, thereby providing technical foundations for projects related to the production of hydrogen using photovoltaic green energy, lithium extraction, and the synthesis of methanol from carbon dioxide. In February this year, the team conducted water quality analysis and laboratory-scale hydrogen production tests at the Bozi-Dabei gas field, preliminarily confirming that the water extracted from the field could be directly fed into electrolyzers to produce hydrogen after simple flocculation and sedimentation. The lithium extraction and hydrogen production test project adopted a \"intermittent cycling + continuous operation\" mode to conduct industrial-scale tests of the entire process flow. In the experiment, the characteristics of photovoltaic power generation were simulated through electrical input; the electrolysis system operated for 6 to 10 hours per day during daylight hours, successfully achieving the coupling of water purification and hydrogen production. It is reported that since the hydrogen production test using the electrolysis system was initiated at the Dabei processing station on April 15, the trial project has been operating in extreme conditions such as sandstorms for 22 days, producing a total of about 236 standard cubic meters of hydrogen.