A study of the factors that contribute to the corrosion process in produced water samples: a multivariate analysis approach

Due to the exploration and production of oil in new oil fields, significant volumes of produced water are being extracted. In maritime platforms, seawater is used as injection water, due to its availability. However, the mixing of seawater and formation water might create fouling. In this study, quantitative investigations into the relationships among 14 chemical properties in different oil fields were carried out. With the aim to correlate the variables measured in produced water samples and the corrosive process regarding them. For this, the multivariate analysis statistical methods principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical clustering on principal components (HCPC) were used. The results show that chemical properties such as sulfate are inversely correlated to formate, bicarbonate, and acetate. Furthermore, the PCA results indicated that, the most influential chemical properties in the produced water samples were chloride, bromide, sulfate, calcium, and strontium. However, it was not possible to visualize the division of clusters. Only, the separation of clusters was observed, in the combination of PCA with HCPC. Where the different dominant factors in the characteristic of interest were showed. The samples, therefore, are classified into three clusters, namely: cluster 1, cluster 2, and cluster 3, for the purpose of discussion.