TETRA Technologies has launched its TETRA Oasis TDS, a water treatment and desalination technology for beneficial reuse and mineral extraction applications.
Courtesy of TETRA Technologies
Managing the ocean of produced water that surfaces along Permian Basin crude could become easier.
TETRA Technologies announced the commercial launch of its TETRA Oasis TDS, an end-to-end water treatment and desalination technology for beneficial reuse and mineral extraction applications from water produced by oil and gas wells .
“We view this as an important milestone for TETRA and the industry in general,” said Brady Murphy, President and CEO.
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Speaking to the Reporter-Telegram, Murphy said the company currently does a lot of processing and recycling of produced water for fracking projects. He added that the company had incorporated a lot of learnings and experiences from this work into its Oasis total desalination solution.
Seismic events linked to saltwater injection are likely behind the drive to develop technology to make beneficial reuse viable, he said.
TETRA recently completed a commercial pilot project for the desalination of produced water in the Delaware Basin for a major North American oil and gas operator. The desalinated water was tested against the Railroad Commission’s published standards for beneficial reuse of water, both in TETRA’s laboratory and an independent third-party laboratory. Subsequently, the treated water was sent to a third party for whole effluent toxicity (WET) testing, where it met all test parameters.
WET testing is a method used to measure the combined toxic effects of all pollutants on aquatic organisms and involves exposing aquatic organisms to treated wastewater samples and observing their response. Tests can be acute or chronic and measure different aspects of organism health. WET testing is a critical part of implementing water quality standards under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permitting program.
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Murphy said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and a number of states have adopted WET testing as part of their permitting process. Obtaining permits must be part of the solution to make beneficial reuse a daily process, he said.
“We believe this is a key step in defining standards more broadly,” he said.
He added: “I am convinced that our solution is commercial. (Now) we have to prove it to our customers and scale it.
TETRA works with a number of major operators in the Permian Basin on desalination, and he said the region is particularly challenging both because of the volumes of water produced and the high total dissolved solids content. This makes finding solutions more complicated.
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Organic materials, chemicals, the nature of oil and natural gas production, higher salt saturation also complicate efforts, he said.
The first field pilot program successfully treated produced water, achieving a 92% recovery rate of desalinated water with total dissolved solids levels ranging from 40 parts per million to 200 ppm, which is better than the average municipal standards for drinking water.
“What we’ll see next are small- and medium-scale commercial pilot projects throughout the Permian Basin in 2025,” Murphy said. “In reality, it will be 2026 before we get to field-scale agricultural factories. »
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There are many competing applications for treated water, he said, listing surface discharges, irrigation and industrial applications.
“As these solutions develop, it’s not just about cleaning the water, but also extracting minerals that can be sold,” Murphy said. “The next step is to extract these minerals. We extract calcium chloride and other solids like lithium, iodine and other valuable minerals.