OriginOil Announces Breakthrough Chlorine Dioxide Pre-Treatment for its CLEAN-FRAC system
Testing shows that proprietary process can significantly improve efficiency of frack water treatment and potentially help sweeten crude
Los Angeles, CA – July 10, 2014 – OriginOil Inc. (OTC/QB: OOIL), developer of Electro Water Separation™ (EWS), the high-speed, chemical-free process to clean up large quantities of water, announced today that in company testing, EWS was found to efficiently generate chlorine dioxide (CLO2), an important pre-treatment step for frac flowback and produced water and other applications.
The company intends to make this process part of its standard CLEAN-FRAC™ product offering.
“Chlorine dioxide can be generated using chemicals, but simpler and cheaper methods have broader application for the petroleum industry,” said Nicholas Eckelberry, OriginOil Chief Research Officer. “In our research, we showed that, by using our existing proprietary process, we can indeed generate CLO2 economically and without using chemicals.”
CLO2 is used by the industry as a pretreatment step to break the oil/grease emulsions, destroy chemical additives, and to kill bacteria. CLO2 generation infrastructure is capital-intensive and results in high consumables use. Therefore, integrating CLO2 generation into the normal process of treating flowback water can result in significant efficiency and cost improvements.
By using EWS, operators can produce CLO2 to process water for re-use with the added benefit of no additional CLO2 generator infrastructure requirement. Additional benefits of CLO2 production within the EWS process flow are expected to not only help remove bacteria, but help save on capital costs of replacing pipe and other infrastructure, as CLO2 is known to oxidize and destroy friction generating chemicals.
“I’m extremely pleased with this development,” said Bill Charneski, President of OriginOil Oil and Gas. “When combined with downstream processes, CLEAN-FRAC already offers a uniquely competitive way to treat flowback water to any level of purity required, and this breakthrough further differentiates us.”
A preliminary test was performed to demonstrate the feasibility of generating chlorine dioxide with EWS technology. An existing lab unit was operated at roughly 50 gpm, and a brine solution was injected, resulting in an effluent stream that showed a direct reading of chlorine dioxide 12 – 14 mg/l. The test results are available to prospective customers and licensees.
“At this time, both the known chemistry and the current analysis strongly support the conclusion that chlorine dioxide was electrochemically produced directly into the treated water stream at mg/l concentrations using only naturally occurring salt as a reagent,” continued Nicholas Eckelberry. “I would like to thank our Director of Field Operations, Dave Anderson, for running an outstanding test which indicates an exciting future for this technology.”
CLO2 treatment has numerous other benefits. For example, ClO2 has proven highly effective at removing plugging agents, such as bacteria, iron sulfide and polymer damage, from the well bore and near-well bore formation. Also, treatment of flowback water with CLO2 can help eliminate toxic hydrogen sulfide off-gassing from oilfield pits and lagoons.
Finally, when frack water treated with CLO2 is reinjected into a well, it can help neutralize hydrogen sulfide in the oil or gas formations. Hydrogen sulfide is one factor that adds sulphur to crude, making it “sour”. Sweet crude commands up to a $15 dollar premium per barrel over sour (Source: Petroleum.uk).
OriginOil disclosed the proprietary capability of EWS to generate chlorine dioxide in a patent application filed on July 15th, 2013, titled “Removing Ammonia from Water”. This patent describes how EWS acts and induces reactions on chlorine-based elements.
