Marcellus Hydrofracture Flowback and Production Wastewater Treatment, Recycle, and Disposal Technologies - Sponsored Whitepaper

Development of the Marcellus gas play in the Northeast; primarily Pennsylvania, New York, and West Virginia, will generate an estimated 7,000 million gallons per year (mgy) of hydrofracture flowback and production wastewater that will have to be managed. This wastewater, as shown by the following “typical” analysis, contains substantial amounts of toxic barium as well as large amounts of many other elements and compounds.

Three methods for management of this wastewater are considered viable today, pretreatment prior to additional treatment and discharge to stream via publicly owned treatment works (POTW), evaporationi (with and without subsequent water recovery), and various chemical precipitation processesii with either recycle of the treated water or subsequent evaporation.