US Patent Issued to SAUDI ARABIAN OIL on Nov. 11 for "Methods of recovering barium from produced water to remove sulfates in seawater for oilfield applications" (Saudi Arabia, Chinese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Nov. 11 -- United States Patent no. 12,466,747, issued on Nov. 11, was assigned to SAUDI ARABIAN OIL COMPANY (Dhahran, Saudi Arabia).

"Methods of recovering barium from produced water to remove sulfates in seawater for oilfield applications" was invented by Jian Hou (Beijing), Tianpiang Huang (Beijing), Fahd Ibrahim Alghunaimi (Dhahran, Saudi Arabia) and Norah W. Aljuryyed (Dhahran, Saudi Arabia).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method for removing sulfates from seawater by immersing a barium adsorbent into produced water to adsorb the barium ions from the produced water. The adsorbent is combined with an acidic solution that pulls the barium ions into the acidic solution. The...