Chemical Analysis of Wastewater from Unconventional Drilling Operations

Abstract

Trillions of liters of wastewater from oil and gas extraction are generated annually in the US. The contribution from unconventional drilling operations (UDO), such as hydraulic fracturing, to this volume will likely continue to increase in the foreseeable future. The chemical content of wastewater from UDO varies with region, operator, and elapsed time after production begins. Detailed chemical analyses may be used to determine its content, select appropriate treatment options, and identify its source in cases of environmental contamination. In this study, one wastewater sample each from direct effluent, a disposal well, and a waste pit, all in West Texas, were analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectroscopy, high performance liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry, high performance ion chromatography, total organic carbon/total nitrogen analysis, and pH and conductivity analysis. Several compounds known to compose hydraulic fracturing fluid were detected among two of the wastewater samples including 2-butoxyethanol, alkyl amines, and cocamide OPEN ACCESSWater 2015, 7 1569 diethanolamines, toluene, and o-xylene. Due both to its quantity and quality, proper management of wastewater from UDO will be essential.

Optimization of thin film solid phase microextraction and data deconvolution methods for accurate characterization of organic compounds in produced water

“…In efforts to meet the goals outlined by various agencies [3,9,10], future efforts should focus on the coupling of comprehensive sampling techniques to more extensive instrumentation such as GC×GC hyphenated to high‐resolution MS, a strategy already being exploited for oil analysis [42] and a handful of PW reports [17,22]. While LC has been utilized for the analysis of PW [16,43], there is, however, no reports at this time for the analysis of PW using 2D LC hyphenated to MS. These technologies enable more confident and comprehensive compound identification compared to the ones used in this study; however, without proper sample preparation, the results may be unrepresentative.…”

Quantity of flowback and produced waters from unconventional oil and gas exploration

“…and other contaminants such as ammonium and iodide (Barbot et al, 2013;Harkness et al, 2015;Kondash et al, 2014;Lauer et al, 2016;Orem et al, 2014;Thacker et al, 2015;Thurman et al, 2014;Vengosh et al, 2014b;Warner et al, 2013).…”

Organic compounds in hydraulic fracturing fluids and wastewaters: A review

“…High resolution LC-TOF-MS has been used to investigate specific additives, focusing mostly on samples from Weld County, Colorado in the Denver-Julesberg basin (Ferrer and Thurman, 2015b;Rosenblum et al, 2016;Thurman et al, 2014). Organic analyses have also been performed on samples collected from the Barnett shale (Maguire-Boyle and Barron, 2014;Thurman et al, 2014), the Wolfcamp and Cline shales in the Permian basin (Khan et al, 2016), New Albany shale (Orem et al, 2014), an unknown formation in Texas (Thacker et al, 2015), a single sample from each of the Eagle Ford, Fayetteville, Burket, and unspecified formations in Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Louisiana. Table 1.…”