A selection methodology of flowback treatment technologies and water reuse in hydraulic fracturing in source rocks – a strategy to reduce the environmental impacts in Colombia

Abstract

Given that in Colombia the development of unconventional reservoirs is on its very preliminary phase, there are no studies related to the flowback treatment, which is a sensitive issue in making decisions to develop this energy resource in the country. Hence, this research proposes a methodology for selecting technically technologies suitable for flowback treatment in unconventional reservoirs in Colombia. A review of technical parameters and experiences in a real scale of different technologies, a sensitivity analysis of four water stability indexes, a correlation between flowback physical chemical parameters of a geological formation similar to Colombian geological formation and an economic analysis are presented. The best option always arises from the higher operational efficiency at the lowest cost.

Optimization of the Water-Energy Nexus in Hydraulic Fracturing Processes Using CO2 and Water as Fracturing Fluids

“…In this context, there are several types of technologies for the flowback water treatment: physical treatments (such as forward and reverse osmosis and membrane distillation), thermal treatments (the most important include multistage flash distillation, multieffect distillation, steam compressing distillation, etc.) and chemical treatments (like ozone technologies, hydrogen peroxide, ultraviolet radiation, and photocatalysis) . However, it has been demonstrated that the treatment technologies most commonly employed to clean the flowback water are membrane distillation and forward osmosis. , Nevertheless, the only requirement to consider in this model for any treatment technology is that the outflows present the minimum necessary conditions to be reused or disposed; this will prevent the generation of environmental concerns or technical problems.…”

Short Review of Produced Water Management System for Beneficial Use or Implementing Environmental Rules and Regulation

“…The company installed three full-scale AltelaRainSM ARS-4000 systems at natural gas wells in the San Juan Basin near Farmington, NM (Igunnu & Chen, 2014) which system can process roughly 4,000 gallons per day (100 bbl/day) of produced water with salt concentrations higher than 60,000 mg/L TDS (Godshall, 2006) . High removal rates of organics, radionuclide and heavy metals from produced water have also been testified for this process (Calderon Carrillo, Aranguren Campos, & Usuriaga Torres, 2017;Godshall, 2006).The main advantages of this process are its required low capital cost and maintenance cost is minimal and treated water quality high (Hasan, 2018). where enough space is obtainable, a wider variety of treatment methods can be used.…”