Assessment of forced evaporation as a solution for onsite produced water management

Abstract

Flowback and produced water (FPW) is a major byproduct of unconventional oil and gas extraction operations. The sheer volume of FPW generated and its hypersaline and hazardous nature requires the water to be managed properly, such as underground injection. However, the increased awareness of the adverse environmental impacts associated with underground injection is expected to drive FPW management away from underground disposal. Meanwhile, the lack of data on the chemical constituents and the toxicological characteristics of treated FPW has likely hampered regulatory agencies in developing policies that enable advanced FPW treatment for reuse. Therefore, until a FPW reuse market emerges to justify the costs of advanced treatment, the most viable FPW management strategy for operators is to reduce the volume of FPW for disposal. This study examines the cost and environmental benefits of adopting an on-site thermal evaporation process through data collected from multiple developmental basins – the Rockies, Appalachia, and Haynesville basins using thermal evaporators. We developed a method for assessing the cost-benefit and applied it to a hypothetical scenario for Eagle Ford shale to demonstrate the potential benefits of thermal evaporation. The challenges and limitations are also discussed in this paper.