OriginOil Technology Breakthrough Greatly Enhances Membrane Filtration, Enabling Highly Efficient Frack Water Recycling
Under extended field testing, Electro Water Separation™ removed most oil and contaminants, enabling iSep™ membrane system to deliver very high purity levels
Los Angeles and Goleta, CA – June 16, 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, and TriSep Corporation, designer and manufacturer of water treatment membranes, announced today that OriginOil’s EWS, combined with TriSep’s iSep™ ultrafiltration (UF) membranes, effectively removes nearly all oil, turbidity, and bacteria, providing a full solution for drillers to efficiently recycle water flowing back from fracking and production.
“Our iSep can tolerate moderate levels of oil, however system performance is greatly enhanced if it is removed prior to our UF membrane, which EWS does at a removal rate exceeding 99%,” said Mike Snodgrass, iSep Market Manager at TriSep Corporation. “The iSep UF completely removed the last remaining suspended solids, microorganisms, and bacteria that passed through EWS, producing a crystal clear effluent.”
The explosion in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has created a new set of demands, challenges and constraints for the use, supply, treatment and disposal of water. The EPA estimates70 to 140 billion gallons of water were used in 2011 alone in hydraulic fracturing wells. Technology providers now offer solutions to promote on site recycling. BCC Research reports the market for equipment to treat wastewater from fracking operations and conventional wells is predicted to grow 9 percent by 2018.
“Since the industry as a whole is striving to reuse 95-98% of frack water, we believe treatment using membranes will play a big role in achieving that goal,” said Bill Charneski, General Manager of OriginOil’s Houston-based Petro Division. “We are proud to have engineered a system that delivers an oil-free feed to TriSep’s highly efficient iSep Ultra Filtration (UF) system.”
Snodgrass continued: “Oil typically clogs polymeric membranes, limiting widespread application on oily wastewater. If a pre-treatment technology existed that could cost-effectively remove oil from water, then we believe the industry could take advantage of membranes and actually achieve their water reuse goals. I think we have that with the OriginOil Electro Water Separation™ (EWS) system”.
CLEAN-FRACTM 1000 incorporates both OriginOil’s EWS and TriSep’s iSep ultra filtration membrane for a full solution for frack water recycling. The system successfully removed oil, suspended solids and bacteria during a month of field testing and demonstration with produced and flowback water from the western slope of Colorado.
In the test, turbidity was reduced by 99.8 percent, Total Suspended Solids were made undetectable, and oil in water was reduced by 99.2 percent.
iSep UF membranes utilize an innovative vacuum process to filter water that uses very little energy and chemicals, dramatically driving down produced water treatment costs. “We’ve taken a giant leap forward in solving produced water issues, and we couldn’t be more excited about it”, added Snodgrass.
CLEAN-FRAC integrates OriginOil’s EWS with a variety of “polishing” systems to deliver a wide range of purity levels that enable different reuse applications from re-injection into frac wells to potable drinking water. These systems include membranes, filters and resins. CLEAN-FRAC is commercially available as an integrated system for end to end solutions and at capacities up to 10,000 barrels per day.
A company video documented the demonstration at Delta, Colorado.