Hydraulic Fracturing’s Dirty Secret

• Evelyn Almonte
• Emir Asani
• Xuan Liu

Advisors: Betul Bilgin, PhD, Lance Baird, UOP

Hydraulic Fracturing continues to boost domestic oil production in the U.S. by accessing oil and gas in difficult-to-reach shale formations with horizontal drilling. Although this impact may seem beneficial, there are some negative factors that come with fracking. So, what is Hydraulic Fracturing’s dirty secret? Fracking uses about 2 to 8 million gallons of water per well, while 3.4 million people die each year worldwide from scarce and contaminated water sources. Fracking has an average of 30% of flowback water returning to the surface. The most common ways of handling flowback water are deep-well injection and open-air pits. Deep-well injections can contaminate groundwater aquifers, while open-air pits evaporate harmful chemicals into the atmosphere. Consequently, treatment for flowback water is starting to become more common today. The typical process of handling flowback water is transporting the water to a municipal treatment plant for treatment and discharge. Our process takes this idea a step further; A mobile treatment solution. This solution will involve transporting our treatment system to fracking locations and treating the flowback water onsite. Our onsite, mobile treatment system enables treatment and recycling of fracking wastewater to help reduce the need to purchase freshwater, as well as reduce the environmental risk that storage of wastewater poses. Our goal is to treat about 55 wells a year that are located within the Marcellus Shale. Each site is guaranteed to have over 90% of their flowback water treated and ready for reuse. This service is the start of a revolutionary solution aimed to meet one of the world’s greatest demands: clean water. Mobile treatment enables billions of gallons of water to be retained and reused, becoming an essential wastewater treatment vital for the future.

See supporting documentation in the team’s Box drive.