Even if the US really gets it's act together and moves to 50% renewable energy by 2020 we will still need fossil energy. We can get it by taking it from non-US deposits and deal with those politics, or we can produce domestic deposits. If we go domestic, we need to address Frak Tech and Water Recycling.
I am one of many technologists looking to address this issue, after putting several comments on several other diary posts, I thought I should just expand those comments into a diary.
The basics of Hydrolic Fracturing "Frak".
Frak is used to release "tight gas" methane deposits. Fraking tend to be used in shale beds like the Marsallus, but may also in deep coal seam deposits or other hydrocarbon layers too deep for other exploration.
The Frak Process (Highly Simplified)
A deep vertical shaft is drilled, often deeper than 10,000 feet down. Then a series of horizontal drilling operations travel outward sometimes for miles in each direction.
From these horizontal drilling positions certain places are chosen to "Frak" the surrounding strata. It is common for each Horizontal Shaft to have 10 or more frak-stages.
Each frak stage involves pumping thousand of barrels of water, mixed with chemicals and proppants at extremely high pressures into the strata. The pressured water splits open the layers of shale, the proppants "prop" open the shale after the water pressure is stopped.
A large frak job can use over 100,000 barrels of water. That's 4,200,000 gallons.
Some of that water, avg about 25%, comes back to the surface during and immediately after the frak job. This water, which is now loaded with salts, fine rock dust, volatile organics and chemicals in called "Flowback" water.
Flowback water is Frak Water which has...flowed back up.
This Flowback water is what needs to be treated or disposed of. Not the Frak water itself.
Frak water is actually an important and valuable commodity for the driller. It is generally made at the site by taking thousand of barrels of clean water from local water sources, and then adding the required chemicals and proppants specific to the job site.
Flowback water is a waste stream which has to be disposed of.
The most common disposal method for Flowback water is reinjection into a disposal well.
But disposal wells are often hard to come by, expensive, overbooked, or unwilling to take flowback waters which are too laden with certain types of chemicals.
This situation leads to a very obvious technical problem: The same location needs to use thousand of barrels of clean (or cleanish) water and is generating thousands of barrels of contaminated water.
So, is there a way to Recycle the contaminated Flowback Water to make usable Frak Water?
The answer is: Yes.
So now the challenge is one of the marketplace, can the technology to recycle the water be done for the same price, or cheaper, than taking fresh water for Frak and then dumping the Flowback water as waste.
So far, the answer is: No.
Unfortunately the cleanup technology, as nearly always, lags behind the contamination causing technology. The scope and scale of Frak is truly novel.
In addition, in many areas of Pennsylvania, West Virginia and other tight gas regions, the local regulations to capture the cost of disposal do not exist, or are being circumvented. If disposal costs are nearly zero, then there is very little reason for gas producers to pay for water recycling.
If disposal costs are $3/bbl+, every gas producer will recycle rather than dispose.
The technology to recycle the water is developing very quickly, now it has to be coupled with public awareness of the technology and a public interest in making water recycling a part of the cost of energy development.
A good deal of this challenge is now falling in large swaths of the US who have never seen the heavy footprint of industrial energy production up close.
West Texas has grown up with heavy oil exploration, but rural Pennsylvania has not seen it since the Rockefeller era oil boom 100 years ago.
The reality is fossil energy, especially domestic natural gas, will and should play a substantial role in nearly all forseen energy mixes.
Tight-Gas, of Shale-Gas, made capturable by horizontal drilling and frak will be a major part of our gas future.
So how can it be best and safely managed is the question.
To gain fossil energy by destroying clean water, is a fools bargain. No one in the public or the gas-industry wants that.
So what is involved in creating systems to use the water in closed-loop processes?
FlowBack and Produced Waters are all closely related challenges. They both have five major catagories of contamination challenges:
- Solids - (mostly fine rock and clay dusts)
- Salts - (Often 6x the salinity of the Ocean)
- Volatile Organics - the Methane Gas Itself, Benzene, Napthalene, Diesel Etc.
- Drilling and Proppant Chemicals - Including surfactants, large polymers, slicking agents etc.
- Metals - Including NORMs and various other metals released from the formations.
Flowback waters tend to be "heavy" on the drilling polymers, fine dust and metals.
Produced waters tend to be "heavy" on the salts and volatile organics.
I would suggest readers here look at the site of the produced water society.
http://70.86.131.22/...
And the site of the Texas A&M Petroleum Research
http://www.pe.tamu.edu/...
Personally I am working on several projects looking to remove nearly all Volatile Organics from Produced Water of Frak Waters. Our work has SBIR funding from both DOE and NSF and is moving into field test operations. Our goal is to take the Produced Water coming out of Mature Wells or FlowBack Water coming back up from a Frak Operation, and clean it up well enough it can be re-used for the next frak-job.
In the summer and fall of 2010 we proved we could recapture up to 99.9% of the Volatile Organics from Produced Water, but at a price point currently considered higher than the cost of "dumping disposal"
You can see the unit set up at an injection well site below.
http://www.pwabsorbents.com/...
The unit will be back out in the field making another attempt to both do the clean up and meet industry costs expectations in a few weeks.
While I don't want anyone to stop pointing out the very real problems associated with Frak, this needs to be tempered by the very real benefits of Domestic Natural Gas.
There are technologies to address the downside of Frak, but there is a lack of regulatory oversite or public knowledge about these technologies.
It would be completely doable for the State's most impacted by Frak started insisting on zero-cycling water used in Frak operations. That would drive the new technology into the field much faster.
Alternately, States can simply add a disposal fee to any bbl of flowback water needing disposal. If the Producer had to pay a $2/bbl disposal fee for all flowback and produced water and validate the disposal by some approved method.
Every barrel would be recycled.
It's how the market works, and it is why new technology gets deployed.
UPDATE: A question about drilling fluids came up, and there are Green drilling fluids, made up of biodigestable materials coming on the market. You can look at some of these materials here.
http://www.miswaco.com/...