IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jeners/v15y2022i13p4619-d846562.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Produced Water Treatment and Valorization: A Techno-Economical Review

Author

Listed:
  • Ramon Sanchez-Rosario

    (Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, The University of Texas at El Paso, 500 W. University Ave, El Paso, TX 79968, USA)

  • Zacariah L. Hildenbrand

    (Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, The University of Texas at El Paso, 500 W. University Ave, El Paso, TX 79968, USA)

Abstract

In recent years, environmental concerns have urged companies in the energy sector to modify their industrial activities to facilitate greater environmental stewardship. For example, the practice of unconventional oil and gas extraction has drawn the ire of regulators and various environmental groups due to its reliance on millions of barrels of fresh water—which is generally drawn from natural sources and public water supplies—for hydraulic fracturing well stimulation. Additionally, this process generates two substantial waste streams, which are collectively characterized as flowback and produced water. Whereas flowback water is comprised of various chemical additives that are used during hydraulic fracturing; produced water is a complex mixture of microbiota, inorganic and organic constituents derived from the petroliferous strata. This review will discuss the obstacles of managing and treating flowback and produced waters, concentrating on the hardest constituents to remove by current technologies and their effect on the environment if left untreated. Additionally, this work will address the opportunities associated with repurposing produced water for various applications as an alternative to subsurface injection, which has a number of environmental concerns. This review also uses lithium to evaluate the feasibility of extracting valuable metals from produced water using commercially available technologies.

Suggested Citation

  • Ramon Sanchez-Rosario & Zacariah L. Hildenbrand, 2022. "Produced Water Treatment and Valorization: A Techno-Economical Review," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(13), pages 1-18, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:15:y:2022:i:13:p:4619-:d:846562
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/13/4619/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/13/4619/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dong, Xiao & Trembly, Jason & Bayless, David, 2017. "Techno-economic analysis of hydraulic fracking flowback and produced water treatment in supercritical water reactor," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 777-783.
    2. Ebenezer T. Igunnu & George Z. Chen, 2014. "Produced water treatment technologies," International Journal of Low-Carbon Technologies, Oxford University Press, vol. 9(3), pages 157-177.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ewa Knapik & Grzegorz Rotko & Marta Marszałek, 2023. "Recovery of Lithium from Oilfield Brines—Current Achievements and Future Perspectives: A Mini Review," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(18), pages 1-28, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jiang, Xingwen & Chen, Mian & Li, Qinghui & Liang, Lihao & Zhong, Zhen & Yu, Bo & Wen, Hang, 2022. "Study on the feasibility of the heat treatment after shale gas reservoir hydration fracturing," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 254(PB).
    2. Marwa M. Waly & Slobodan B. Mickovski & Craig Thomson, 2023. "Application of Circular Economy in Oil and Gas Produced Water Treatment," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-19, January.
    3. Dimitrios Koutsonikolas & George Karagiannakis & Konstantinos Plakas & Vasileios Chatzis & George Skevis & Paola Giudicianni & Davide Amato & Pino Sabia & Nikolaos Boukis & Katharina Stoll, 2022. "Membrane and Electrochemical Based Technologies for the Decontamination of Exploitable Streams Produced by Thermochemical Processing of Contaminated Biomass," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(7), pages 1-35, April.
    4. Zheng, Cunchuan & Liu, Fuchuan & Zhang, Tailiang & Huang, Zhiyu, 2021. "Preparation of fluoropolymer nanoparticles(FPNPs) dispersion and its application as a wetting adjustment agent for sandstone rocks," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 237(C).
    5. Echchelh, Alban & Hess, Tim & Sakrabani, Ruben, 2020. "Agro-environmental sustainability and financial cost of reusing gasfield-produced water for agricultural irrigation," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 227(C).
    6. Tiffany Liden & Zacariah L. Hildenbrand & Ramon Sanchez-Rosario & Kevin A. Schug, 2022. "Characterizing Various Produced Waters from Shale Energy Extraction within the Context of Reuse," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(13), pages 1-15, June.
    7. Roustazadeh Sheikhyousefi, P. & Nasr Esfahany, M. & Colombo, A. & Franzetti, A. & Trasatti, S.P. & Cristiani, P., 2017. "Investigation of different configurations of microbial fuel cells for the treatment of oilfield produced water," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 192(C), pages 457-465.
    8. Echchelh, Alban & Hess, Tim & Sakrabani, Ruben, 2018. "Reusing oil and gas produced water for irrigation of food crops in drylands," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 206(C), pages 124-134.
    9. Yafei Zhao & Ken-ichi Itakura, 2023. "A State-of-the-Art Review on Technology for Carbon Utilization and Storage," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(10), pages 1-22, May.
    10. Piotr Jakubowicz & Teresa Steliga & Katarzyna Wojtowicz, 2022. "Analysis of Temperature Influence on Precipitation of Secondary Sediments during Water Injection into an Absorptive Well," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(23), pages 1-17, December.
    11. Echchelh, Alban & Hess, Tim & Sakrabani, Ruben & de Paz, José Miguel & Visconti, Fernando, 2019. "Assessing the environmental sustainability of irrigation with oil and gas produced water in drylands," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 223(C), pages 1-1.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:15:y:2022:i:13:p:4619-:d:846562. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.