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Fracture Water Recycling
 KTI’s goal: Expanding the beneficial use of ozone – always.
KTI’s newest use expansion: Frac water treatment serving both the expanding natural gas production industry and the environment.
Releasing natural gas from its host shale deposit requires high-pressure injection of enormous amounts of fresh water. Water is a precious resource in danger of being depleted by such high-volume usage. Although about 20% to 60% of the water used for fracturing the shale flows back, its re-use is prohibited because of the contaminants. The common spoilers of the flow-back water are petroleum hydrocarbons, oil and grease, diesel-related organics, BTEX, polyacrilamides, transition metals, barium and strontium. So the challenge is to effectively and economically treat the flowback water to allow recycling into the next production well.
KTI’s Nanozox™ process answers the challenge. Peroxide-coated micro- to nanobubbles persist as a negatively-charged bubble emulsion to effectively treat the contaminants of concern. Organics oxidize to carbon and oxygen. Metals are precipitated and filtered out in a form that can be immobilized for disposal. The water can be further treated to concentrate salinity for granular salt production, road de-icing application, or deep well disposal. Evaporate water, free from volatile organics, can be returned to river systems.
Recycling water is produced by a combination of treatment of the first stage of flowback water, treatment and dilution of the second stage of flowback water, and treatment and desalination of third-stage flowback water.
KTI’s process equipment ranges from 100,000 gpd mobile systems to 500,000 gpd fixed treatment capacity.
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