WVU To Develop Frack Water Treatment Technology
Researchers are looking for ways to treat water used to drill in
the Marcellus Shale.
The State Journal
14 June 2010
By Pam Kasey
MORGANTOWN -- Research under way at West Virginia University may
add a new solution to the wastewater problem faced by drillers for
natural gas in the Marcellus Shale.
Paul Ziemkiewicz and Jen Fulton of the West Virginia Water Research
Institute at the National Research Center for Coal and Energy at WVU
have teamed with FilterSure Inc. of McLean, Va., on the problem
Drillers use fresh water plus small amounts of sand and additives to
make frack water, which is injected into a gas well to drive very fine
cracks into the formation where the gas is trapped. The microscopic
cracks, or fractures, are propped open by the sand, allowing the gas to
escape to the surface where it is collected, cleaned and sent to homes,
businesses and industries.
The frack water comes back to the surface containing solid particles,
salts and minerals from the rock formation. This brine can be harmful
if returned to streams without being treated -- but treatment can be
prohibitively expensive.
Ziemkiewicz and Fulton propose to treat the water to a level that would
allow it to be reused as frack water, resulting in no off-site
discharge.
"Our intention is to recycle frack water for reuse in drilling, which
will reduce the need for surface water," said Ziemkiewicz.
The $1 million, 32-month research and demonstration project is
supported by an award from the U.S. Department of Energy National
Energy Technology Laboratory.
FilterSure has a unit that can remove solid particles suspended in the
frack water; the challenge facing the researchers is to remove enough
of the dissolved salts and minerals so the water can be reused on the
next gas well.
The system will be small enough to be trucked to a well for on-site
water treatment. Then, rather than trucking untreated frack water to a
wastewater treatment facility or to an underground injection site for
disposal, the recycled frack water will be trucked to the next gas well
drilling site.
"Our goal is to reuse all of the water we produce in our Marcellus
operations," said David Templet, director of regulatory affairs for
Chesapeake Energy Corp., which is active in the Marcellus Shale.
"This recycling idea will be one more tool to help us meet that goal,"
he said.
It should be noted that MATRIC partner Natural Gas Innovations of South
Charleston has developed several portable, scalable solutions for
treating wastewater at the sites of natural gas wells.