Environmental and Economic Water Management in Shale Gas Extraction

José A Caballero,Natalia Quirante,Alba Carrero-Parreño,Juan A Labarta,Ignacio E Grossmann

doi:10.3390/su12041686

José A Caballero, Natalia Quirante + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su12041686

Copy DOI

Journal: Sustainability	Publication Date: Feb 24, 2020
Citations: 17	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Alicante, Carnegie Mellon University

Abstract

This paper introduces a comprehensive study of the Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) of water management in shale gas exploitation. First, we present a comprehensive study of wastewater treatment in the shale gas extraction, including the most common technologies for the pretreatment and three different desalination technologies of recent interest: Single and Multiple-Effect Evaporation with Mechanical Vapor Recompression and Membrane Distillation. The analysis has been carried out through a generic Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and the ReCiPe metric (at midpoint and endpoint levels), considering a wide range of environmental impacts. The results show that among these technologies Multiple-Effect Evaporation with Mechanical Vapor Recompression (MEE-MVR) is the most suitable technology for the wastewater treatment in shale gas extraction, taking into account its reduced environmental impact, the high water recovery compared to other alternatives as well as the lower cost of this technology. We also use a comprehensive water management model that includes previous results that takes the form of a new Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) bi-criterion optimization model to address the profit maximization and the minimization Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA), based on its results we discuss the main tradeoffs between optimal operation from the economic and environmental points of view.

Highlights

Natural gas extracted from tight shale formations “shale gas” is playing an important role in satisfying the continuous increase in global energy demand
Characterization factors at the midpoint level are focused on single environmental problems, while characterization factors at the endpoint level show the environmental impacts aggregated on three higher levels: human health, ecosystem quality and resource depletion [44]
This paper studies the life cycle impact assessment of the wastewater treatment in the shale gas extraction, including the most common technologies for the pretreatment and three different desalination alternatives of recent interest, such as Single-Effect Evaporation with Mechanical Vapor Recompression (SEE-MVR), Multiple-Effect Evaporation with Mechanical Vapor Recompression (MEE-MVR), and Membrane Distillation

Summary

Introduction

Natural gas extracted from tight shale formations “shale gas” is playing an important role in satisfying the continuous increase in global energy demand. Draw solutions have the disadvantage that they must be recovered in additional separation processes, which increase the cost of the process Some of these limitations where solved combining FO and RO for shale water treatment [28]. In this paper we first address the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) of three alternative desalination technologies for wastewater in shale gas extraction: Single-Effect Evaporation with Mechanical Vapor Recompression (SEE-MVR), Multiple-Effect Evaporation with Mechanical Vapor Recompression (MEE-MVR), and Membrane Distillation (MD) We analyze their corresponding LCIAs in order to compare their sustainability. The system boundary for the wastewater treatment in shale gas extraction includes freshwater consumption, the use of raw materials, energy and chemicals, wastewater treatment facilities, and final disposals of waste material, such as the sludge and brine

Initial Wastewater Pre-treatment

Thermal-Based Technologies for the Wastewater Treatment

Membrane Distillation Technology for the Wastewater Treatment

Wastewater Treatment Results

Conclusions