Frack water treatment demonstrated in Masontown
Larry Pepper, field supervisor for Aquatech, monitors Aquatech's MoVap wastewater mobile distillation unit currently in use at the Ronco Industrial Waste Water Treatment facility near Masontown.
George Milne, manager of the Ronco Industrial Waste Water Treatment facility near Masontown, speaks on the use of Aquatech's wastewater distillation unit currently in use.
Aquatech's MoVap unit, currently in use at the Ronco Industrial Wastewater Treatment facility near Masontown, is being introduced as a solution specifically designed for the wastewater needs of the Marcellus Shale Gas project.
MASONTOWN — A Canonsburg company on Monday demonstrated an invention that officials said can distill hydraulic fracturing wastewater from Marcellus shale gas wells to meet state and federal standards and reduce drillers’ treatment costs.
Aquatech connected its mobile water distillation system, named MoVap, to the Ronco Industrial Wastewater Treatment Facility to display the new technology.
MoVap is attached to a specially designed trailer so it can be taken to wells being hydraulically fractured, or fracked, or a satellite water treatment site. It can reduce treatment costs and meet the government’s water quality standards for total dissolved solids (TDS), said Venkee Sharma, Aquatech president and chief executive officer.
“It’s a complete solution,” Sharma said.
He said Aquatech is an international company that treats and recycles wastewater in 60 countries, and MoVap is a scaled down version of its technology.
The unit demonstrated on Monday is the only one Aquatech has manufactured so far, but production is under way in Canonsburg, said company vice president Devesh Mittal.
Aquatech’s model unit has been operating under the state Department of Environmental (DEP) permit for about two months and will remain in use for three or four more weeks. After that, the company will seek a permit extension, Mittal said.
The unit is connected to the Ronco treatment facility, which disinfects frack water and adds chemicals to remove heavy metals. The removed contaminants become sludge, said George Milne, manager of facility.
Drilling companies add chemicals and sand to water to frack wells. Some of that water returns to the surface with the facking chemicals and contaminents from underground after the process is complete.
MoVap then boils the water, captures the vapor and cools it until it becomes water again. That water, known as distillate, contains 100 parts per million (ppm) of TDS, said Aquatech field operations manager Rob Bealko.
A MoVap system operating alone would produce water with 500 ppm of TDS, according to company literature. The DEP and federal Environmental Protection Agency set 500 ppm as the maximum amount of TDS allowed in drinking water and waterways.
The sludge left behind from the distillation process is disposed of in an underground well in Ohio, Mittal said.
MoVap can distill up to 72,000 gallons of frack water and produce 25 gallons per minute of distillate per day, he said, noting that the units run on electricity from a generator.
Incoming frack water can contain varying levels of TDS and MoVap can be adjusted to treat it, Mittal said.
He said MoVap can reduce a driller’s water management cost by 20 to 30 percent.
Aquatech doesn’t sell or lease MoVaps. It sells the treatment service and would send four to seven employees with a unit to a well site to operate it, Mittal said. He said the cost of the service varies based on the amount of TDS in the frack water.