Sequential Precipitation - Fractional Crystallization Treatment of Marcellus Shale Flowback and Production Wastewaters

摘要

By 2016 development of the Marcellus shale gas play in the Northeast will generate an estimated 60 million gallons per day of hydrofracture flowback and production wastewater. This wastewater is close to saturation with sodium, calcium, magnesium, strontium, and barium chlorides as major constituents. Discharge of such wastewater has been outlawed in Pennsylvania, leaving deep well injection and treatment for recycle/reuse as current disposal options. Resource-recovery by sequential precipitation and fractional crystallization, which produces salable products from the wastewater, has been developed as an economic disposal method for Marcellus wastewaters.