Over the past 4 decades, the increasing amounts of excess sludge from municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) represent a challenge toward achieving the sustainability of the drinking water and sanitation sector in Egypt, resulting in a serious environmental pollution due to the uncontrolled use of non-stabilized sludge. Here, we report a comprehensive overview on the current situation of excess sludge production, management, and disposal in Egypt. Owing to the technologies used for wastewater treatment in Egypt that mainly consist of activated sludge based-technologies, about 2.1 million tons of dry solids is produced annually. The majority of WWTPs in Egypt lack proper sludge stabilization facilities, except for the WWTPs in high living standards governorates (e.g., Cairo, Alexandria, and Giza). Therefore, about 85% of the non-stabilized sludge is improperly disposed and directly used for agricultural purposes. Despite the importance of managing the use of non- and/or partially-treated sludge, especially for agricultural purposes, the national legislations for sludge disposal/reuse in Egypt are incomplete and, in practice, they are not reinforced. In order to evaluate the most sustainable scenario for sludge management in Egypt, a qualitative decision-support system (DSS) was used. The DSS framework was refined and estimated, based on several evaluating categories, and used to guide the decision process towards achieving sustainable management of municipal wastewater sludge in Egypt. The results reveals that “sludge-to-energy” through anaerobic digestion is the most sustainable scenario for sludge disposal and management in Egypt. The anaerobic digestion-based technology seems to offer advantages of interest at affordable costs, such as the production of renewable energy, stabilized soil conditioners, and fertilizers for agricultural purposes.@en

Carbon dioxide (CO2) injection has been widely used in conventional reservoirs for enhanced oil recovery and CO2 sequestration. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of CO2 injection in tight reservoirs is limited due to diagenetic processes that impact displacement efficiency. This research work assesses the performance of CO2 injection in tight reservoirs and evaluates oil mobilization and fluid distribution within the rock pore systems. A set of experiments, including routine core analysis, X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and mercury injection capillary pressure (MICP), was performed on Scioto sandstone. Three core-flooding runs were conducted to evaluate oil recovery of different injection schemes, including tertiary miscible CO2 injection, secondary immiscible CO2 injection, and secondary miscible CO2 injection. A nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometer was utilized to evaluate the fluid distribution in pre- and postflooding schemes. Results show that secondary miscible CO2 injection provided the highest displacement efficiency (Ed) of 88%, with oil mobilized from both micro- and macropore systems, leading to the highest oil recovery of 93% original oil in place (OOIP). Tertiary miscible CO2 injection had Ed of 67%, providing an ultimate oil recovery of 79% OOIP mostly from the macropore system. Limited contribution of micropores during the tertiary miscible CO2 injection is attributed to the increased water content as a result of previously conducted secondary water flooding. Secondary immiscible CO2 injection showed the least oil recovery among the injection schemes of 68% OOIP, which is attributed to the unstable displacement, as indicated by Ed of 52%. The efficiency of pore fluid displacement was determined through NMR analyses, and the findings are in line with the displacement efficiency values obtained from core-flood experiments, with a strong positive correlation. This finding is a promising strategy for determining a suitable CO2 injection scheme in tight rocks for oil recovery and CO2 storage.@en

The microscopic structure of low-permeability tight reservoirs is complicated due to diagenetic processes that impact the pore-fluid distribution and hydraulic properties of tight rocks. As part of an ongoing study of carbon dioxide-enhanced oil and gas recovery (CO2-EOR/EGR) and CO2 sequestration, this research article adopts an integrated approach to investigate the contribution of the micropore system in pore-fluid distribution in tight sandstones. A new dimensionless number, termed the microscopic confinement index (MCI), was established to select the right candidate for microscopic CO2 injection in tight formations. Storativity and containment indices were essential for MCI estimation. A set of experiments, including routine core analysis, X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), mercury injection capillary pressure (MICP), and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), was performed on three tight sandstone rock samples, namely Bandera, Kentucky, and Scioto. Results indicate that the presence of fibrous illite acting as pore bridging in Bandera and Kentucky sandstone samples reduced the micropore-throat proportion (MTMR), leading to a significant drop in the micropore system confinement in Kentucky and Bandera sandstone samples of 1.03 and 0.56, respectively. Pore-filling kaolinite booklets reduced the micropore storativity index (MSI) to 0.48 in Kentucky and 0.38 in Bandera. On the other hand, the absence of fibrous illite and kaolinite booklets in Scioto sandstone led to the highest micropore system capability of 1.44 MTMR and 0.5 MSI to store and confine fluids. Therefore, Scioto sandstone is the best candidate for CO2 injection and storage among the tested samples of 0.72 MCI.@en

Iron sulphide scale, which exists in different forms, is common in sour oil and gas production wells. Iron sulphide hard scales are difficult to remove with acids, requiring mechanical intervention or the replacement of the production tubing. An environmentally friendly formulation with a high pH is proposed for the removal of both soft and hard iron sulphide scale from oil and gas wells. The formulation consists of DTPA (di-ethylene tri-amine penta acetic acid) in addition to K2CO3 as a catalyst. High pressure high temperature solubility experiments were performed under both static and dynamic conditions in the temperature range of 70–150 °C and a constant pressure of 3447.38 kPa. Several combinations of the catalyst and DTPA chelating agent were used to optimize the catalyst/DTPA ratio to achieve maximum scale solubility. Field scale samples were collected and analyzed using XRD. The scale removal efficiency of the proposed formulation outperforms that of the current formulations used in the oil industry, with the added advantage of not releasing H2S. The optimum DTPA concentration is 20 wt% and the optimum catalyst concentration is 9 wt%, which provides a solubility of 90 % of the field scale. In addition, the ecotox profile of the proposed formulation is better than that of the currently used formulations because toxic corrosion inhibitors are not used. The maximum reported corrosion rate for the new formulation is 0.036 kg/m2, which is well below the acceptable limit (< 0.227 kg/m2).@en

A common problem that faces the oil and gas industry is the formation of iron sulfide scale in various stages of production. Recently an effective chemical formulation was proposed to remove all types of iron sulfide scales (including pyrite), consisting of a chelating agent diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid (DTPA) at high pH using potassium carbonate (K2CO3). The aim of this molecular modeling study is to develop insight into the thermodynamics and kinetics of the chemical reactions during scale removal. A cluster approach was chosen to mimic the overall system. Standard density functional theory (B3LYP/6-31G∗) was used for all calculations. Low spin K4Fe(II)4(S2H)12 and K3Fe(II)(S2H)5 clusters were derived from the crystal structure of pyrite and used as mimics for surface scale FeS2. In addition, K5DTPA was used as a starting material too. High spin K3Fe(II)DTPA, and K2S2 were considered as products. A series of KmFe(II)(S2H)n complexes (m = n-2, n = 5-0) with various carboxylate and glycinate ligands was used to establish the most plausible reaction pathway. Some ligand exchange reactions were investigated on even simpler Fe(II) complexes in various spin states. It was found that the dissolution of iron sulfide scale with DTPA under basic conditions is thermodynamically favored and not limited by ligand exchange kinetics as the activation barriers for these reactions are very low. Singlet-quintet spin crossover and aqueous solvation of the products almost equally contribute to the overall reaction energy. Furthermore, seven-coordination to Fe(II) was observed in both high spin K3Fe(II)DTPA and K2Fe(II)(EDTA)(H2O) albeit in a slightly different manner.@en