1. Page 6 The Northeast ONG Marketplace
WATER
MANAGEMENT
By: Timothy J. Drake, Ph.D. & Gerald P. Willnecker, Zinkan
Enterprise, Inc. & Todd Ennenga, Purestream Services
Oil & Gas Industry Challenge: Produced water is water trapped in underground
formations that come to the surface during oil and gas exploration and
production. It occurs naturally in formations where oil and gas are found and
are millions of years old. When oil or gas is extracted, they’re brought to the
surface along with this produced water as a combined fluid. The composition of
this produced fluid includes a mixture of either liquid or gaseous hydrocarbons,
produced water, dissolved or suspended solids, produced solids such as sand or
silt, and recently injected fluids and additives that may have been placed in the
formation as a result of exploration and production activities.
The American Petroleum Institute reports that produced water handling and
treatment represents an $18 billion cost to the oil and gas industry in the U.S. alone.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that the cost of the disposal of oil and gas produced
water ranges from as low as $0.002 per gallon ($0.08/barrel) to as high as $0.30 a
gallon ($12.00/barrel). By contrast, water for agricultural irrigation (USDA) can
be as low as $0.0001 per gallon ($0.004/barrel) and municipal drinking water costs
in the range of $0.001 per gallon ($0.04/barrel). The price of cleaning produced
water is therefore as much as 300 times greater than municipal water, and as
much as 3,000 times greater than agricultural irrigation water. The separation,
handling, and disposal of produced water represent the single largest waste stream
challenge facing the oil and gas production industry. As the United States moves
toward greater energy independence, hydraulic fracturing for oil and natural gas
will continue to increase along with the demand for water in these industries. In
order to keep up with the demand for water and bring down overall costs there is
a strong push for re-use of as much of the processed water as possible. Removing
the impurities from flowback and produced water for re-use or disposal in an
economical manner is crucial to continuing exploration and production in low
resource pricing cycles. The ongoing need for brine in this industry will grow
as it is used for controlling well pressures, capping, stabilizing drilling mud, and
dissolving of downhole additives.
Cleaning Up Water: Many solutions exist to solving these issues which include
chemical treatment, thermal evaporation and distillation and many other
technologies. One such example is a multi-step process whereby an operator
feeds their produce water through a chemical treatment step with WellREADY™
oxidizing chemicals and polymers, followed by an Induced Gas Floatation step
to remove suspended solutions (IGF+) and a final cleanup step using Advanced
Vapor Recompression (AVARA System). Overall the combination of WellREADY,
IGF+ and AVARA (FIGURE 1) units provide a multi-stage economical and
reliable solution for higher level treatment of produced and frac flowback water.
Deployed in the field and closer to the wellhead, these systems promote minimal
liability for spills by providing clean, distilled water for piping and transfer around
the field and reduce overall water handling costs. The WellREADY, IGF+, and
AVARA are highly advanced energy efficient combined water treatment and brine
concentration systems. These systems treat produced and frac flowback water and
provide varying level effluent streams based on needs including distilled quality
water and clean, concentrated brine for re-use in field operations.
How It Works: Produced or frac flow-back water (#1) enters the WellREADY (#2)
treatment system where organics, metals and bacteria are oxidized and polymers
added to coagulate the suspended solids. In addition heavy metals drop to the
bottom of the system for collection and non-oxidizable petroleum materials float
to the top for skimming. The stream moves to the IGF+ (#3) unit for minimal pre-
treatment. Air and gas is percolated through the material from within the main
vessel to produce a stream of water and oil with fine bubbles. Oil and suspended
solids create a floc in the presence of clarifier chemicals. This flocculent is removed
(#4) from the surface in a froth skim system.
De-oiled water exits through the bottom of the flotation unit and is piped to the
AVARA System. Water in the AVARA core is heated and boiled (#8) in a patent
pending thermally efficient vapor recompression process. Steam from (#8) process
is re-condensed (#6) to provide clean, distilled water. Residual chlorides are
concentrated to a (#7) brine of about 250,000 parts per million. This brine (#6)
is clean and available for re-purposing or recycling back to oilfield for use. The
distilled water stream can be reused, or repurposed to any use as normal fresh
water.
Zinkan Enterprises is known for its reliable and innovative water treatment
technology. This, combined with the company’s team of outstanding experts in
oilfield water treatment, clearly sets their services apart from other technology
and treatment companies. Zinkan’s water treatment team works closely with field
operators to optimize AVARA system integration within existing field operations
to provide clean, distilled water and a concentrated brine.
RENEWABLE WATER:CLEANING FLOWBACK, BRINE AND
PRODUCED WELL WATER FOR REUSE, DISCHARGE AND DISPOSAL
FIGURE 1: WellREADY, IGF+ and two AVARA units capable of treating 3000 BBL/
Day of produced water while yielding 2000 BBL of distilled fresh water.
FIGURE 2: Overview flowchart of the WellREADY, IGF+ and AVARA Water Treatment
Process.

2. May 2015 Page 7
When the various technologies used in the fully integrated system are employed to
treat flowback or produced oil and gas well water a number of key advantages accrue
to the end user company. These include the ability to efficiently recycle up to 75 %
of said water with Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) of up to 150,000 ppm. The reuses
include, replacing fresh water in any and all processes. Deriving a byproduct high-
weight clean brine (FIGURE 3) that is useable in place of other brines for drilling
mud stabilizer, capping
(killing) wells that await
production infrastructure,
and much-reduced true
sludge volume that would
be disposed in a downhole
disposal well.
All of the above can
significantly reduce the
overall water costs of source-
well processes and contribute
to the savings accruing to
additional future wells. The
robustness of these systems
allow handling of a variety
of feed water input quality.
One fully integrated system
(Oxidizer, IGF, AVARA) can
process 1500 barrels of flowback or produced water in a 24 hour day. It can produce
over 1000 barrels of clean distilled water in that time. With available operating
power the overall system output volume can be scaled in 1500 barrel increments
because components are packaged in independent stand-alone modular formats.
Reduced operating costs are aided by innovative low pressure design which
minimized system fouling issues experience with some competitive units. And last,
but certainly not least, bottom-line-reducing energy efficiency, (system consumes
only 3.5 kW per barrel processed) is achieved by employing mechanical vapor
recompression distillation technology that continuously recovers and reuses the
original boiling-point process thermal energy. This significantly cuts the overall
operating budget needed to accomplish your environmentally friendly fracturing
flowback and produced water remediation goal.
Overall, each AVARA System is designed to treat 1500 BBL of Flowback or
Produced Water during each 24 hour period (TABLE 1). Table 1 outlines expected
volume projections for typical production. The AVARA system has shown highly
cost effective success in applications where the untreated flowback or produced
water tests in the feed Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) range is between 50,000 and
150,000 ppm. A 50,000 Feed TDS with Brine, TDS of 200,000 will typically have a
recoverable fresh water output of 75% of the input feed and microbes completely
destroyed. The below chart shows an example output for the AVARA system. Note
that the lower the Feed TDS the more efficient the system isat extracting fresh water
volumes and concentrating remaining brines.
For additional information please contact the author at Zinkan Enterprises Inc.,
1919 Case Parkway North, Twinsburg OH 44087, Phone 800-229-6801, www.
zinkan.com.
FIGURE 3: Arial View Full AVARA System (Left), Field Deployed AVARA (Right –
Back) & IGF+ (Right-Front)
FIGURE 4: Final Byproducts – Sludge,
Concentrated Brine, Clean Water
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