Integrated Water Technologies Inc. opened its first Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP)-approved FracPure Treatment and Recycling Facility in North Fayette Township in southwest Pennsylvania.
The facility currently provides phase one of the FracPure treatment process, using chemical treatment and filtration to recycle 250,000 gal per day, providing 100% reuse of flowback. According to the company, no water will be discharged into rivers and streams in the process, helping the natural gas industry ease statewide environmental water concerns.
FracPure phase one treatment will be provided during construction of the first full-scale centralized FracPure brine treatment plant, scheduled for completion in early 2012.
According to the company, the full-scale FracPure brine treatment plant will remediate flowback brine into cleaned water that exceeds the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and state drinking water standards of 500 parts per million of total dissolved solids, and Pennsylvania's Chapter 95 wastewater requirements, which makes it safe to return to the water table and into rivers and streams. The only other byproducts are 99.7% pure salts for water softening and liquid salt for erosion control and de-icing of roads.
"This is the first frac wastewater treatment system that has been successfully demonstrated for the treatment of Marcellus Shale frac wastewater," said John T. Hines, deputy secretary of DEP’s Office of Water Management.
Integrated Water Technologies is currently engineering and permitting multiple centralized treatment plants and FracPure Mobile Onsite Treatment Units to provide 100% frac water recycling, production brine disposal, pit water filtration and disposal and source water supply throughout the Marcellus Shale to meet growing drilling and production demands.
Source: PR Newswire
