Reuse

A water reuse field treatment facility is shown with ponds, tanks and batteries

Produced water is a valuable resource for completions and other operations with the benefits of decreased freshwater sourcing/use, trucking costs and disposal costs. Clean Chemistry’s innovative chemistry, treatment platform and reuse experience in the oilfield provides the tools and perspective to design effective and practical water and solids management programs. Whether it’s early flowback, produced water, high iron, sulfides or hydrocarbons, we’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly and have treatment programs to handle them all.

We offer two approaches to reuse: on-the-fly and conventional clarification treatment. Clean Chemistry provides high performance chemistry programs for both approaches.

On-the-Fly Reuse

On-the-fly reuse of produced water is a lower cost option when using blends of produced and freshwater. In this program contaminants are “stabilized” in the water and are not separated out. This approach is useful in formations that can tolerate fine solids (generally less than 5 microns) and hydrocarbons in the frac fluid.

In this process the untreated or partially treated produced water source is conditioned during water transfer with a proprietary multifunctional product for iron complexing, solids dispersion, and scale control. Corrosion inhibitor may also be included. This conditioned water is blended with freshwater and a synergistic combination of microbial control agents, including fast-acting PeroxyMAX, are applied upstream of the working tanks. Flowback aid and clay control products may also be added at this stage.

Three jars, raw to treated, left to right, sit in a PeroxyMAX trailer at a reuse site.

Conventional Reuse

Conventional water reuse employs a chemical-physical clarification process for contaminant removal to meet cleaner water treatment specifications. For these operations, process automation and longer-term treatment installations help to manage costs. Clean Chemistry’s programs use in-line chemical treatment stages that are automatically controlled and fully contained up to the solids separation stage.

Containment, continuous monitoring and automation provide a greater level of safety, particularly when encountering hydrogen sulfide (H2S) control needs. Clean Chemistry can design the treatment process for a customer and will provide the chemistry, treatment control platform, operators (when requested) and oversight to ensure consistent treatment results. The customer can either own or lease the major capital equipment for the site.

Advantages

All reuse processes benefit from Clean Chemistry’s chemical treatment platform that is automated for chemical dispensing with in-line flow meters, sensors (ORP, pH and others as needed), QC alert levels and cloud-connected data collection and reporting. Site layouts are designed to minimize safety risks and increase treatment reliability. Each reuse project is unique and Clean Chemistry uses the adaptability of our technology to build optimized treatment scenarios that provide project scalability.

  • Greatly accelerated flocculation and clarification. Rapid solids separation with simple, standard equipment
  • Effective microbial control. Mitigates H2S risk, reduces bacteria load and produces a measurable ORP response for real-time quality assurance and control
  • Complementary lab work and pre-job process design. Jar tests assess scope of work, chemistry requirements, and relevant KPIs to meet customer specification
  • Flexible treatment for changing water quality. Easily adjust all chemistry for consistent treated product
  • Highly selective oxidant technology. Targets contaminants, not equipment. Won’t cause pitting or damage to layflat hose, seals, fittings or steel
  • Reliable, consistent treatment quality. In-line sensors enable automated dosing of oxidant and flocculation chemistries
  • Flexible, bundled chemistry package includes oxidant, polymer, coagulant and is tuned to meet customer specifications
  • Rapid, low cost mobilization; small footprint. Site design can be tailored to meet customer flow rate requirements
  • Streamlined solids management and sludge control
A PeroxyMAX trailer is rigged up to treat reuse at a facility.