Siemens to supply system to reuse wastewater produced by natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania

This flowback and produced water waste treatment system will be part of a new wastewater treatment plant in Tioga County and include continuous precipitation and sludge dewatering. By using the Siemens system, the wastewaters will be treated to produce a Hydraulic Stimulation Fluid (HSF) product for reuse, reducing the demand on fresh water sources. The plant is scheduled to go online in April 2011.

Tioga County’s system will be comprised of staged precipitation and dewatering technologies to treat 288,000 gpd (1,090 m³/d) of waters generated from the drilling of natural gas wells. The HSF product produced from the system will reduce hardness by 97%, remove barium by 99% and iron and other metals to less than 1 ppm, reduce hydro fracturing chemical usage, optimize pH for friction reduction, and remove total suspended solids to less than 100 ppm.

The recycled, customized product is used in fracturing shale. Shale gas is natural gas produced from shale rock fields. This gas has become an increasingly important source of natural gas in the United States over the past decade, with interest also spreading to potential gas shales in Canada, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Gas production in commercial quantities in these fields requires fractures to provide well permeability, and modern technology in hydraulic fracturing allows the creation of extensive artificial fractures around well bores. Hydraulic fracturing, however, results in the production of wastewater that must be treated.

HSF is a trademark of Hydro Recovery LP.

BU: Siemens will supply the Tioga County plant with two sidebar filter presses for sludge dewatering.