fracking millions of liters of water must be brought in to the quarries.
General Electric has developed a process for the recycling of rinse water from natural gas drilling, which can be used directly on site. It will cut the cost of wastewater treatment.
The Fracking gave the United States a true natural gas boom. In this method, a liquid is forced through holes into the rock to create cracks in it, can be recovered from inaccessible by the natural gas deposits. What electrifies the global energy industry, environmentalists however see with horror: Because when fracking not only huge amounts of water are consumed, which contains pumping fluid into the rock is also a lot of toxic chemicals.
General Electric wants to tackle this problem with a technology that cuts the cost of water treatment, is energy efficient and reduces the risk of contamination. Despite the impressive flow rates in the U.S., many countries hesitate to use fracking also with you. Even the U.S. State of New York has been stopped fracking projects. “The water treatment is becoming a critical factor for the spread of the technology,” says Amy Myers Jaffe. The environmental researcher from the University of California at Davis has been appointed recently in the environmental advisory board of General Electric (GE). Whether fracking will play a role in energy supply in the future, depends on whether “the industry riff it, put it in an environmentally responsible manner.” So far, the treatment of fracking fluid before place to costly. In the case of the Marcellus Shale, one of the largest shale gas deposits in the United States, the wastewater is also too salty for existing methods. Therefore, the natural gas producer transport it to large treatment plants Untreated or dispose of it in the ground. per well are required for the fracking 8-18 million liters of water to rupture the rock at depth. The largest part comes at the end back to the surface and contains numerous toxic substances that come from the deposit. The delivery companies use the fracking fluid substantially again. Do this, they must, in the absence of economic preparation procedures in place to temporarily store the contaminated water in specially constructed pools that leak ! sometimes. Fracturing the water is subsequently diluted with fresh water before it is pumped to the next flushing. However, this process can be repeated as often as not. Transport to treatment plant itself is not cheap. There is also the risk that the contaminated cargo arrives in accidents in the environment. If the effluent is not recycled, but stored in underground rock, this can trigger earthquakes in the worst case. The procedure of General Electric is now to make both the dilution of the effluent and the removal unnecessary. It is based on the desalination of sea water using membrane distillation: water is heated at low pressure, it forms steam, from which a membrane separates the pure water vaporThe is in the desalination of sea water at the other end of the process again. cooled down, so that is liquid, not salt water. General Electric has now the heating and cooling systems is replaced by a vapor compressor, such as is used in industrial cooling installations. “Instead of separating the components of the heating and cooling, there is only one plant,” says Ajilli Hardy, energy engineer at GE Research, the research arm of energy giant.
GE has tested the new process in a pilot plant that can treat almost 10,000 liters of water a day. The test showed that the treatment costs could be halved, GE researchers say. For industrial use, but the system must be scaled up to 150,000 liters a day. The technology is not equally useful, applies a Mark of Boling V + Development Solutions, a subsidiary of the gas producer Southwestern Energy. In some quarries, the wastewater from the fracking was not too salty. In dry areas such as the Eagle Ford shale gas reserves in Texas, the process could be worthwhile but says Boling. If it functioned as claimed by General Electric, which would “make a big difference” for the further development of fracking. <- AUTHOR MARKER DATA BEGIN -> ( Kevin Bullis ) / <- RSPEAK_STOP -> (nbo)
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