Recent Water Treatment Technology for Unconventional Natural Resource Development

Development of unconventional natural resources such as shale gas, shale oil and coal bed methane, has been activated and improved the productivity due to the recent technology advance in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. However, the flowback water mixed with chemical additives, and the brine water containing oil, gas, high levels of salts and radioactive metals is produced during the gas production. Potential negative environmental impact due to large volumes of the produced wastewater is increasingly seen as the major obstacles to the unconventional natural resource development. In this study an integrated framework for the flowback and brine water treatment is proposed, and we reviewed the upcoming state of the art technology in water treatment. Basic separation processes which include not only membrane, evaporation, crystallization and desalination processes, but the potential water reuse and recycling techniques can be applied for the unconventional natural resource industry.