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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 37 records · Page 2
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2022

Laboratory and pilot-scale studies of membrane distillation for desalination of produced water from Permian Basin

Substantial quantities of produced water generated during the extraction of oil and gas from unconventional reservoirs present significant environmental concern and increase the operating cost for this industry. Membrane Distillation (MD) can serve as a potential solution for beneficial reuse of produced water by generating high-quality permeate and reducing the volume of produced water requiring disposal. This study investigated treatment of produced water from Permian Basin in both laboratory and pilot-scale studies. Laboratory tests revealed the potential to successfully recover 50% of produced water although some increase in permeate conductivity was observed due to the passage of ammonia from the feed side. Initial pilot-scale test with filtration of raw produced water as the only pre-treatment step led to precipitation of SrSO 4 , NaCl, and Fe in the system once the solubility limits for these salts were exceeded. However, chemical pretreatment that included pH adjustment, aeration, and barite precipitation, allowed successful steady-state operation of the AGMD pilot system for 5 days where the produced water was concentrated from 127 g/L to 255 g/L (~50% water recovery) while recovering high quality permeate. Overall, greater than 99.7 % salt rejection was achieved with the average permeate flux of 1.86 LMH. Finally, mass balance analysis suggested potential Ba and Ca precipitation in the system but there was no impact on AGMD performance and permeate quality during 5 days of continuous operation in the field.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2024

Critical mineral source potential from oil & gas produced waters in the United States

The volume of produced water, a by-product of oil & gas operations and other energy processes, has been growing across the United States (U.S.) along with the need to manage or recycle this wastewater. Produced water contains many naturally occurring elements of varying concentrations, including critical minerals which are essential to the clean energy transition. However, the current understanding of critical mineral concentrations in produced water and the associated volumes across the U.S. is limited. This study has assessed available databases and literature to gain insight into the presence and concentration of five high priority critical minerals, namely cobalt, lithium, magnesium, manganese, and nickel. The U.S. Geological Survey's National Produced Waters Geochemical Database was the main data source used for determining average critical mineral concentrations in produced water from the major oil and gas reservoirs in the U.S. The volumes of produced water for these major reservoirs were coupled with these concentrations to provide insights into where critical minerals are likely to have high abundance and therefore more recovery options. The analysis indicated the highest recovery potential for lithium and magnesium from produced water in the Permian basin and the Marcellus shale region. However, these assessments should be considered conservative due to the limited availability of reliable concentration data. Finally, it is expected more critical mineral recovery options could emerge with comprehensive characterization data from more recent and representative sources of produced water.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Supercritical water desalination and oxidation (SCWDO): Effectiveness on complex solutions, technoeconomic, and CO 2 impact for produced water treatment

The modern energy-economy is increasingly causing the production of highly saline brines, including from produced water. Supercritical water desalination can concentrate and extract minerals from these brines, but the effects of mixed salt interactions, organic degradation with additives, and the technology's economics are not well understood at supercritical condition. The present study evaluated and experimentally studied an integrated supercritical water desalination and oxidation (SCWDO) process for treating real-produced water samples from oil/natural gas field. The complex interactions between the various anions and cations in produced water were extensively evaluated. Most of the divalent and trivalent ions were extracted below 250 °C while the majority of the monovalent salt were removed between 380 to 410 °C. The treated real produced water was of drinking water quality, with <500 mg/l of total dissolved solid (TDS) and with 100% organics removal. Furthermore, the heat liberated during the organic oxidation could be utilized internally and for electricity generation for enhanced the energy efficiency and lower cost of produced water treatment. With system optimization, the proposed SCWDO process can essentially be made a net zero energy process. A novel process flow diagram for the commercial scale self-powered hybrid SCWDO technology was proposed as a cost-effective produced water treatment to mitigate the environmental crises. Techno-economic analysis showed that produced water treatment cost with SCWDO can be reduced to 2–3 $/m 3 and can be up to 60 % cheaper to traditional deep well reinjection. Additionally, the proposed SCWDO process could achieve net negative CO 2 emission.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2022

Continuous electrocoagulation-membrane distillation unit for treating hydraulic fracturing produced water

Hydraulic fracturing oil and gas produced water is frequently highly impaired. While it is often deep well injected, there is great interest in treating this water for beneficial uses. Given the complexity of these produced waters, multiple unit operations are necessary. Electrocoagulation has been considered as a promising pretreatment technology. Here electrocoagulation is considered as a pretreatment prior to membrane distillation. The focus of this work is on understanding the electrocoagulation process in order to design an integrated unit operation. Electrocoagulation is used to remove organic compounds that will foul the membrane leading to membrane failure during membrane distillation. Using aluminum or iron electrodes, half-cell reactions in the electrocoagulation cell and electrode potentials have been calculated. Electrocoagulation was conducted using a continuous electrocoagulation reactor with actual produced water using aluminum, iron or mixed aluminum and iron electrodes. Here, the results obtained here indicate that electrocoagulation can obtain good removal efficiency of total organic carbon (TOC) by using different reaction conditions. Removal of organic compounds is essential to minimize fouling during membrane distillation. Further the performance of the electrocoagulation process depends strongly on the quality of the feed water. Insoluble species were more effectively coagulated than dissolved organic species. Continuous electrocoagulation shows great potential as a scalable unit operation for pretreating hydraulic fracturing produced water.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2024

An Update on Project PARETO - New Capabilities in DOE's Produced Water Optimization Framework

Managing oil and gas produced water, characterized by hypersalinity and large volumes, presents significant challenges. This paper introduces an advanced optimization framework, PARETO, which offers a novel approach to strategic water management, emphasizing produced water (PW) treatment, quality tracking, quantification of emissions, and environmental justice. This work pre-sents a case study showcasing different produced water management challenges. The PARETO framework demonstrated its effectiveness in optimizing water management strategies in line with environmental sustainability and regulatory compliance.

Zamarripa, Miguel↗
DOE OSTI2024

Creating Markets for Produced Water

Conference slide deck for participation in the Produced Water Society 2024 Annual Meeting research round table with a demonstration of a produced water market clearing tool that is presently in development. Our demonstration illustrates how an alternative approach to produced water management can reduce costs for operators and increase produced water recycling rates.

Drouven, Markus↗
DOE OSTI2024

Project PARETO—DOE’s Produced Water Optimization Initiative

The Texas Produced Water Consortium invited Project PARETO to contribute a write-up about the project to an update report they are preparing for the Texas legislature. The article we have prepared presents a high-level overview of the PARETO produced water management framework, and includes sections dedicated to going into more detail about PARETO’s strategic model and water sharing portals (AquaShare and AquaTrade).

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2022

PARETO: An open-source produced water optimization framework

PARETO is an optimization framework for onshore produced water management that is meant to empower practitioners, researchers, and policymakers to identify cost-effective and environmentally sustainable ways to manage, treat, and – when possible – beneficially reuse produced water from oil & gas operations. Given user-provided water production, demand, and transportation data, PARETO can help determine where and how to build out produced water infrastructure while simultaneously improving the coordination of water deliveries over time. As shown here, the framework is innately designed to help organizations recognize opportunities for minimizing fresh and brackish water consumption by maximizing produced water reuse in active oil & gas development areas. PARETO is Python-based and is publicly available via GitHub.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2026

What is Produced Water Worth? The Total Value Proposition in the Marcellus Formation and Permian Basin

Produced water is a byproduct of oil and gas extraction and is known to contain lithium, a critical mineral. Produced water can also contain other minerals and commodities that are recoverable and have economic value. Here we focus on estimating the total value proposition of produced water in two important basins. That is, we assess the potential ‘sale price’ of all commodities that could be reasonably extracted from a unit volume of produced water. This value estimate helps better understand the economic and technological opportunities associated with produced water.

02 PETROLEUM↗
DOE OSTI2024

Optimization strategies for produced water networks with integrated desalination facilities

Optimal management and desalination of produced water is a major challenge for U.S. oil and gas development. Integrating rigorous desalination models into multi-period produced water network optimization problems presents several hurdles, which need to be tackled using advanced optimization strategies. Here, in this work, a novel multi-period produced water network formulation with separate solid and liquid flows is introduced to avoid singularities at zero flows. Rigorous steady state desalination models based on mechanical vapor recompression are embedded at the desalination sites in the network model. An integrated optimization formulation is developed to co-optimize the design of desalination units along with the operation of the network. Furthermore, a more robust approach based on the trust region filter method is developed to efficiently integrate complex desalination models into the multi-period planning problem. Both optimization approaches are demonstrated on a produced water network from the PARETO library (Drouven et al., 2022) using thermal desalination units. Our results show that while the TRF and integrated approaches have comparable solve times, the TRF approach has better performance reliability in terms of solver convergence. Furthermore, the optimal solution obtained by embedding rigorous models into the network is significantly different than when desalination costs are approximated using simple cost models, which motivates further research in this field.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2025

Estimating the Total Value Proposition of Coal Fly Ash and Produced Water

Here we describe the total potential &quot;sale&quot; value of produced water and coal fly ash due to the mineral content they contain. Produced water is water that is co-produced during oil and gas operations. Coal fly ash is the solid powder that remains after coal is burned. Both coal fly ash and produced water matter partly because of they contain critical minerals that have economic value and could be extracted. Here we calculate the total potential value of all the mineral products, critical minerals and other products such as salts, so that we can gain a more complete economic outlook on both feedstocks. Poster presented at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Annual Meeting held in New Orleans, Louisiana, December 15 to 19, 2025.

critical minerals, lithium, rare earth elements↗
DOE OSTI2025

Produced Water Quality Standards & Techno-economic Analysis for Alternative Treatment Trains

This work presents NETL’s efforts in analyzing the performance and cost of a of water treatment trains for processing produced water. Levelized cost of water (LCOW) and specific energy consumption (SEC) figures are provided for both treatment trains. Permeate compositions are compared to the Type I produced water standards for the state of Texas.

low salt rejection reverse osmosis↗
DOE OSTI2022

Produced Water and Waste Heat-aided Blowdown Water Treatment: Using Chemical and Energy Synergisms for Value Creation

The project objective was to develop a cooling blowdown water (BDW) treatment process utilizing produced water (PW) and low-grade heat to maximize water reuse and saleable by-product generation while reducing chemical and energy footprints of the treatment. The proposed treatment process consists of mixing, softening, organics and suspended solids removal, reverse osmosis (RO), thermal desalination, and brine electrolysis. BDW samples collected from a local coal-fired power plant and PW samples from two shale gas production wells were used in this study. Each treatment unit was first designed and tested to quantify its treatment efficiency, and its chemical and energy requirements. In addition, a process model was developed and model simulations were conducted based on the experimental results and literature data to optimize the treatment process. A techno-economic analysis was conducted to quantify chemical and energy savings as well as production of 10-lb brine as a saleable product. With the field-collected BDW and PW samples, mixing experiments determined a volumetric mixing ratio 10:1 (BDW:PW) resulted in the best performance of multivalent ions removal and largest chemical savings for softening. Softening of the BDW/PW mixtures using alkaline chemicals (Na 2 CO 3 and NaOH) achieved 95%-100% removal of scaling-forming cations (Ca, Mg, Fe, Ba, Sr) and 60% of silicon, and 10% of total organic carbon (TOC). The mixing and softening treatments yielded an effluent with total dissolved solids (TDS) concentration of 23 g/L. Activated carbon (AC) filtration removed TOC to a low level (< 3 mg/L) and further removed remaining scale-forming divalent metals and silica from the softened water. The AC filtration resulted in a slight reduction of TDS from 23 g/L to 20 g/L, leaving behind only mostly monovalent ions (i.e., sodium and chloride) in the filtered water. These pretreatments yielded a feed water that met the criteria of the downstream reverse osmosis (RO) to prevent membrane fouling. A cross-flow RO system was used to further concentrate the TDS of the AC effluent. Various factors including TDS, pH, and applied pressure were examined and optimal conditions were determined for the co-treatment process. An integrated process consisting of mixing, softening, AC filtration and RO was used to treat a continuous flow (0.25 – 1.2 L/min, or 0.07 – 0.32 gpm) and successfully generated RO permeate as product water (TDS < 0.5 g/L) for reuse in cooling operation, and a concentrate (TDS ~ 45 g/L) to be further treated in a thermal desalination unit. These flow rates meet the FOA’s criterion of 0.01 – 1 gpm. Overall, the co-treatment of BDW/PW allowed shorter ramp-up time compared to treatment of BDW alone. It resulted in 40% and 55% savings of Na 2 CO 3(s) and NaOH, respectively, compared to treating the BDW and PW individually for the same level of softening. The co-treatment also resulted in a 29% energy saving compared to treatment of BDW only for the level of TDS concentration. A thermal desalination system was designed using CFD simulations and manufactured in the WVU Innovation Hub for further treatment of the RO concentrate to generate 10-lb brine. The system has a design flow rate of 2 gpm and has been successfully tested. A bench-scale brine electrolysis system was developed for on-site generation of chlorine/hypochlorite (Cl 2 /OCl - ) and caustic soda (NaOH) as useful chemicals for the co-treatment process. Using salt solutions (0.5 M and 1 M), the system achieved faradaic efficiencies of 93%-97% and 70%-77% for caustic soda and chlorine/hypochlorite generation, respectively. An economic analysis showed that the electricity costs for on-site generation of these chemicals were significantly lower than the chemical prices offered by suppliers. An industrial-scale process model consisting of mixing, softening, AC filtration, RO, thermal desalination, and brine electrolysis was developed using the Aspen Plus V9 in conjunction with Aspen Custom Modeler V9. The model serves as a solvable Aspen Plus model and as basis to form the costing infrastructure. In addition, techno-economic analysis considering capital, operating, and transportation costs was conducted. An optimization solution showed that produced water for mixing is still advantageous in low quantities. The optimum solution approaches a leveled cost of water (LCW) of 2 $/m 3 which becomes cost competitive with nominal water treatment prices.

20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Mesofluidic Inline Separation for Produced Water Treatment

Mesofluidic inline separation developed by PNNL represents an opportunity to remove a key barrier in the treatment of produced water, namely suspended solids that clog downstream operations. The US alone produces over 800 billion gallons of produced water each year, most of which is reinjected underground (but not into the aquifers) as waste. The impact from treating and reusing even a fraction of this wastewater is immense as aquifers in the Midwest and elsewhere dry. The work described herein is essential to leveraging the opportunity to improve produced water quality (to allow for beneficial use) by combining mesofluidic inline separators with reverse osmosis systems. Providing water for agricultural and industrial uses in the American Southwest and Midwest by allowing the reuse of petroleum produced water may be critical to the long-term economics of the region. This is especially true as drought conditions are rapidly lowering aquifer levels in these regions. The incumbent technology for desalination is reverse osmosis (RO) due to its ability to treat a wide range of feedwaters and technological maturity. However, suspended solids cause RO (and other dissolved solids removal technologies) to become clogged and loose performance. A common strategy is to use prefilters upstream of RO systems, but these membrane-based filters easily clog and require regular maintenance. Unlike membrane filters, mesofluidic inline separators provide removal of suspended solids with much lower pressure drops than conventional systems filtration systems, permitting substantially higher flowrates. Although the amount of produced water from petroleum operations is vast, only a small fraction of it is reused or turned into potable water, for example, because of the lack of technologies to remove both dissolved and suspended solids at a significant throughput. This project shows that mesofluidic inline separators coupled with a commercial dissolved solids removal technology (RO) are positioned to do exactly that. Mesofluidic inline separators fit within commercial piping and are tunable for particle sizes of interest as described below. Indeed, mesofluidic inline separators have remarkably smaller footprints than competing filtration technologies and are easily transportable from jobsite to jobsite. This technology has no moving parts so that solids removal can be accomplished at much lower operating cost.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2025

Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PA DEP) 26r Detailed Produced Water Compositions (version 2.0)

A database of geochemical compositions of aqueous species in produced water reported to the PA Department of Environmental Protection (PA DEP). Samples were collected between late-2010 to late-2024. Data from publicly available PA DEP 26r reports were scraped from pdf files and cumulated into tabular spreadsheet format for >3,000 produced water streams from Marcellus Shale wells in Pennsylvania. In addition to providing the original values, the NETL NEWTS team has reformatted the dataset to allow sample streams to be easily copied into OLI Studio and Geochemist WorkBench (GWB) software for modeling the geochemistry and the recovery of critical minerals, such as lithium, from these produced water streams. ***This dataset is an updated version of the PA DEP 26r Detailed Produced Water Compositions (version 1.0) dataset, providing expanded spatial and temporal coverage.***

Aqueous Chemistry↗
DOE OSTI2022

Maximizing the Proppant Carrying and Viscoelastic Properties of the Bakken Hypersaline-Produced Water with High-Viscosity Friction Reducers for Sustainable Applications

Summary The development and production of unconventional reservoirs, such as the Bakken Formation, have become a resolved mystery for operators in North America since the arrival and advancement of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies. As a result, unconventional reservoir assets became the central focus of the oil and gas industry at the state, national, and global levels. The produced water from these activities in the Bakken Formation have high salt contents (110,000–350,000 ppm) total dissolve solids (TDS) and can pose significant challenges to the environment if not treated. Deep injection into disposal wells is the routine method used to get rid of the Bakken produced water. However, there have been some concerns that unrestrained injections, in addition to polluting the groundwater, could potentially lead to seismic activities either at the time of injection or in the near future. To diminish the environmental impacts that may be associated with induced seismicity, including the reduction of the costs of water acquisition, the produced water can be treated and reused in the hydraulic fracturing processes. Also, the treated water could be used for irrigation purposes, for power generation, and coal mining operations. The issues of waste water and residual oil high in TDS are challenges yet to be effectively addressed despite preceding research and studies on advancing produced water technologies. The goal of this study is to explore all applicable ways by which the produced water from the Bakken Formation can serve as a replacement base fluid for use with polymers like the high-viscosity friction reducers (HVFRs) to create hydraulic fracturing fluids that can be stable with reservoir conditions and also be able to minimize environmental impacts and cost of operations. Experimental investigations using the high-salinity produced water from the Bakken Formation with HVFRs were carried out. The studies included a base case that served as a bench mark for comparing the effectiveness of the other scenarios. The results indicate that the Bakken hyper-saline produced water can withstand effect of heavy metals, salinity, hardness and remain stable through different shear rates (66–330 s−1) when treated with higher dosages [4–8 gal/1,000 gal (gpt)] of HVFRs. Filtration and dilution were the only methods used on the Bakken Formation produced wate for this research

Engineering↗