New Membrane Technology for Oil Field Services Waste Management
Reusing wastewater from oil and gas drilling can reduce costs and lower the impact in environmentally sensitive areas, and a new agreement between The Texas A&M University System and oil field service giant M-I SWACO will help bring such technology to commercial operations.
The technology, which was developed by Texas A&M's Department of Petroleum Engineering and the Global Petroleum Research Institute (GPRI) in partnership with A&M's Separation Sciences Laboratory. The technology is being licensed to M-I SWACO by the A&M System, specifically to use membrane filtration for treatment and desalination of wastewater created during the oil and gas drilling process. The department and M-I SWACO are targeting the reuse of water for oil and gas drilling operations to reduce costs and lower the impact in environmentally sensitive environments. By partnering with GPRI we gain access to external sources of new ideas and technology,” said Dr. Tom Geehan, Corporate Director of Technology Environmental Solutions for MI SWACO. “Combining that with M-I SWACO’s R&D, manufacturing and marketing prowess, we believe can offer our industry a chance to use the newest and best ways to help them provide sustainable energy resources for many years.”
The research partnership with M-I SWACO will support advanced research in membrane separation at Texas A&M, says Burnett. His team is working on technology to selectively remove contaminants from water produced from oil and gas wells. Water flow back from hydraulic fracturing practices is a vexing problem encountered by those developing the United State’s unconventional gas and oil resources worldwide. In the Barnett Shale play in Texas, wells require from 5 to 7 million gallons of water per well to stimulate gas production from the tight gas-containing formation. If treated to remove solids and other contaminants, much of this water can be reused, avoiding the competition with communities and agriculture for fresh water. In West Texas’ Permian Basin, fields producing from conventional formations make seven-times as much water as oil, with each barrel of water requiring reinjection for disposal. In an area plagued with droughts and water shortages, the potential for reuse of purified water is clear. MI- SWACO plans to rapidly introduce portable units to treat such brines and make the resulting fresh water available for beneficial operations.
M-I SWACO is the industry’s leading supplier of drilling fluid systems, fluid systems and specialty tools designed to optimize wellbore productivity, maximize production rates, and provide environmental solutions that safely manage waste volumes generated in both drilling and production operations. Contact information: Dave Burnett GPRI 979 845 2274 (burnett@pe.tamu.edu) Tom Geehan M-I SWACO 281 561 1411 (tgeehan@miswaco.com |