Advanced Water Treatment for Hydraulic Fracking Water
Hydraulic fracking (HF) is a development process of injecting water, containing sand and chemicals, in wells under extremely high pressure to fracture or crack open pores in the shale formation to release the oil and gas. The hydraulic fracking process injects a large quantity of water (~ 100 million gallons) per well. Groundwater and surface water resources are withdrawn to account for the large volume of water needed for the hydraulic fracking process, which directly influences the availability of ground and surface water for other consumptions. The flow-back water and produced water obtained during the hydraulic fracking process contains organic chemicals, dissolved metal ions, total dissolved solids, and chemical additives.
What is Fracking Water Treatment?
Fracking Water Treatment is defined as the treatment of wastewater which generates from the extraction of oil or gas activities. Such extraction activities undergoes stringent regulations for treating wastewater with the help of fracking operations so as to make water comaptible enough to be reused in several other applications. Rising demand to treat water required for hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling so as to avoid the contamination of groundwater is expected to drive the growth of the global market in future years.
Click to Download PDF Copy of the Hydraulic Fracturing Wastewater Treatment System
The Advanced Water Treatment Unit is a simple and effective way of combining three proven technologies (hydrodynamic cavitation, UV-ozone, and electrochemical cell) for the treatment of produced water to meet the National Primary Drinking Water Regulations. For the oil and gas industry, better treatment of wastewater should increase its reuse and reduce the demand for freshwater for the hydraulic fracking process. It is projected that an average of 2.4 billion gallons of produced water is extracted every day. This Advanced Water Treatment skid is portable. It can operate on-site and can handle 400 GPM of wastewater. The treated water at least has the potential to be reused for the hydraulic fracking process.
Economic Impact:
The three technologies included in the Advanced Water Treatment skid were arranged in a Plug -n-Play model, meaning multiple units of these technologies can be added or removed depending on the water quality of produced water and treated water. The largest waste stream in oil and gas production is the produced water with an average of 2.4 billion gallons extracted per day. In the hydraulic fracking process, the cost for transportation includes bring water on-site for good development and transferring produced water for treatment or disposal, which is estimated at $0.50 to $8 per barrel.