Abstract
There are four key aspects for water use in hydraulic fracturing, including source water acquisition, wastewater production, reuse and recycle, and subsequent transportation, storage, and disposal. Water use life cycle is optimized for wellpads through a discrete‐time two‐stage stochastic mixed‐integer linear programming model under uncertain availability of water. The objective is to minimize expected transportation, treatment, storage, and disposal cost while accounting for the revenue from gas production. Assuming freshwater sources, river withdrawal data, location of wellpads, and treatment facilities are given, the goal is to determine an optimal fracturing schedule in coordination with water transportation, and its treatment and reuse. The proposed models consider a long‐time horizon and multiple scenarios from historical data. Two examples representative of the Marcellus Shale play are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the formulation, and to identify optimization opportunities that can improve both the environmental impact and economical use of water. © 2014 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 60: 3490–3501, 2014
Highlights
With the advancement in directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing, shale gas is predicted to provide 46% of the United States natural gas supply by 2035 1
90% of water used in shale gas production is for hydraulic fracturing, while the remaining is necessary during the drilling process
We focus on applications in the Marcellus Shale play the proposed models can be used in other shale gas formations
Summary
With the advancement in directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing, shale gas is predicted to provide 46% of the United States natural gas supply by 2035 1. The flowback and produced water contain various contaminants that need to be treated in order to partially remove them for recycling and reuse it at the well Shale play logistics such as the sources for freshwater acquisition, storage of water, the volume of water required to fracture each stage, and the composition and volume of the wastewater vary greatly across geographic sites and the operational life of a well. River withdrawal data, location of wellpads and treatment facilities are given, the goal is to determine an optimal fracturing schedule and recycling ratio Since this is a difficult problem to model and solve, we intend to consider as a first step freshwater acquisition. We focus on applications in the Marcellus Shale play the proposed models can be used in other shale gas formations
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