Underwater biological treatment facility for industrial wastewater

Annually around 300 million m3 of Produced Water (PW) from oil and gas production is discharged to Sea in the North-East Atlantic region. This results in app. 4090 tons of oil being discharged to the marine environment together with harmful production chemicals. We will adapt MBBR (Moving Bed Bio Reactor) technology that is proven technology onshore for cleaning industrial wastewater onshore, to be placed on the seabed. This will enable retrofitting to exiting oil production facilities by overcoming space and weight restrictions on the platforms. The project will demonstrate that MBBR on the seabed is a technically and financially viable method to achieve zero harmful discharge of PW from offshore oil and gas operations. The commercial lead is MUTAG, a subsidiary of Lynddahl A/S that develops and supplies the MUTAG BioChips^TM which we will use in the MBBR demo. The project will expand MUTAG’s business model, customer base, market locations and introduce MUTAG as a major player in the offshore water treatment industry. The project initially targets Danish oil production platforms, but the technology will be applicable globally.