Ohio University receives DOE grant for produced water treatment research

During oil and natural gas extraction, processes like fracking use water to access desired resources. As oil and natural gas are extracted, “produced water” returns to the surface as a byproduct of the extraction process. Produced water is a complex mix of water, oil, naturally occurring substances like lithium, salts and rare earth elements, and chemical additives injected into the well to facilitate extraction.

If reused at all, produced water is typically confined to the oil and gas industry that created it. Due to its contents produced water can’t be used in other industries—but this could soon change. Ohio University has received grant funding from the United States Department of Energy (DOE) for chemical engineering research related to reusing produced water in other sectors. The DOE awarded OHIO $1.5 million under agreement DE-FE0032454 to research the development of an economically feasible process to treat produced water for beneficial use outside of the oil and gas industries.

Principal Investigator and Ohio University Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Dr. John Staser says the idea is to prevent reinjection of produced water and the negative environmental impacts that activity has.

“The goal of the project is to treat the produced water so that it can be used in other industries, like agriculture for example,” said Staser. “[The treated water] could either be for irrigation or for watering livestock, but part of the project involves characterizing the treated produced water to determine the potential application. The water quality after the treatment process is going to be the determining factor on what it can be used for.”

The overall research will consist of characterizing produced water, treating the water and recovering resources throughout the whole operation. This will be done through a multi-step process that consists of membrane-based treatment steps, filtration and adsorption steps and then resource recovery.

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Staser says produced water is a complex mix of things and therefore needs to be characterized before and after treatment. Additionally, the produced water will be sourced from different areas in Ohio to see how its composition varies from site to site.

“We need to characterize it beforehand so that we know what's in it—how much oil is in it, what is the dissolved solids content, does it have species of interest like lithium and rare earth elements” Staser explained. “We also need to characterize it after treatment to figure out what sort of water quality we have achieved through the treatment process—were we able to remove or recover any critical minerals or rare earth elements or other elements of interest that might be in the produced water.”

The funding from the DOE will be used to purchase equipment and supplies and support key personnel at the different organizations involved in this project.

“We always are greatly appreciative of the funding that DOE provides for us to support our research efforts,” Staser emphasized. “It's really critical that we get support from the government like this to stand up these research programs because it's hard to actually get a research program off the ground without strong support from agencies like the Department of Energy.”

To make conducting this research possible, Staser says collaboration will be key both at Ohio University and across the U.S. The project will be run through Ohio University’s Institute for Sustainable Energy and the Environment (ISEE), a recognized worldwide leader in advanced carbon materials. ISEE Director Dr. Jason Trembly will help facilitate the use of coal and waste coal for the produced water treatment process, as well as assist in developing techno-economic and lifecycle analyses.

“For advanced filtration and adsorption materials, for produced water treatment and resource recovery, some of the materials that actually do that work in this process will be derived from coal and waste coal,” said Staser.

OHIO Professor of Physics Dr. Eric Stinaff will also work to advance produced water research. Stinaff is an expert in the development of nanoscale materials. He will contribute to the characterization of the produced and treated water using nanoscale material-based sensors, which could prove to be a novel approach to characterization.

ISEE students and research staff will also contribute to this project. Dr. Kody Wolfe and Dr. Omar Movil-Cabrera, both research engineers at ISEE, will contribute their expertise. The research will also support Ph.D. students in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

Three external companies are also part of the project. Giner Labs, an electrochemical engineering firm just outside of Boston, will work on sensors for characterization. West Virginia-based CONSOL Innovations will develop the advanced carbon materials that are derived from coal and waste coal. Exergy Systems, a California water treatment and recycling company will help with developing processes for treatment and recycling of the industrial wastewater.

“Like all of our projects, it's highly collaborative in nature,” explained Staser. “It's really a big sort of multi-faculty, multi-department, multi-college and then multi-organization project.”

Research began in August 2024 and is estimated to be complete by August 2027.

For more information please visit www.ohio.edu/engineering/isee.