From the American Chemical Society , an environmentalist’s nightmare.
Desalination of drinking water, fracking, and methane hydrates all wrapped up into one positive outcome.
Using a form of ‘ice that burns’ to make potable water from oil and gas production
In the midst of an intensifying global water crisis, scientists are reporting development of a more economical way to use one form of the “ice that burns” to turn very salty wastewater from fracking and other oil and gas production methods into water for drinking and irrigation. The study on the method, which removes more than 90 percent of the salt, appears in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.
Yongkoo Seol and Jong-Ho Cha explain that salty wastewater is a byproduct of oil and gas production, including hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. These methods use water and produce as a byproduct almost 10 barrels of salty water for every barrel of oil. That water could help people in water-stressed regions. But it can’t be desalinated economically with traditional methods. Seol and Cha knew that an alternative called “gas hydrate desalination” showed promise. A gas hydrate consists of only water and a gas such as methane, the stuff of natural gas. Thus, when hydrates form, salts and other impurities are left behind. When the hydrate breaks down, the gas and pure water are released. However, forming the gas hydrate used in desalination required costly chilling of the water to 28 degrees Fahrenheit. Seol and Cha sought to develop a less costly version of the method, which involves a variation on methane hydrates, chunks of ice retrieved from deep below the sea that burst into flame when brought to the surface.
They describe development and laboratory testing of a new type of gas hydrate desalination technique. They formed the hydrates from water and carbon dioxide with the gases cyclopentane and cyclohexane, which made the method work more efficiently. It removed more than 90 percent of the salt compared to 70 percent with the previous gas hydrate technique. And the process works at near-room temperature, reducing the need for chilling.
The authors acknowledge funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory.
The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 163,000 members, ACS is the world’s largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.
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Tom G, I have the same complaint but have resolved to just keep the “pure” spelling for those “in the know”.
As for “In the midst of an intensifying global water crisis…” this is the big lie from which every other lie told by the enviro-nauts stems. The shear ridiculousness of the statement, on a planet which is more than 70% covered in water! Where, if there was an air-strip at the bottom of the ocean, an airplane would have to climb 25,000 feet or more just to break the surface!
What is in short supply is potable water. Not because it isn’t laying everywhere at our feet but simply because we piss-away resources on complete nonsense (carbon capture and storage (CCS) comes to mind) when de-salination plants and pipelines is all that is required to put this lie to rest forever. At a fraction of the cost of Alberta’s venture into CCS ($250 billion) we could de-salinate and pipe enough water to put Evian out of business.
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Humorous interlude.
Gunga Din says:
“Humorous interlude”
I’ve got to admit, the first thing that I thought of when I read the previous posts was BSG and that it should be: fraking.
Thanks for the video.
@ur momisugly Tom the Geologist
So all those expletives on Battlestar Galactica were spelled, for ex., like You fracing whatchamacallit!?
Doesn’t have quite the same punch…
Willis- REALLY. Stooping to a consensus argument to prove me vainglorious in my crusade to allow the industry to define its own term. Much like the words “Sync” or “Disc” which were not in the language but invented by industry, fracing is what we spell when we discuss it. As someone stated once, the overwhelming consensus of virtually all people that the world was flat never reduced its sphericity by a single jot. Neither will the mis-spelling of a term invented by an industry by outsiders make it correct by the sheer volume of misuse. But maybe I am wrong. As Joseph Goebles said: If you tell a lie often enough, people will believe it.
I suspect that the ration of the volume of water used to product produced varies greatly and depends on too many factors to make any kind of estimate realistic. In Pennsylvania, we use about 150,000 bbl (6 Million gallons) to frac each well (notice how I spelled that and you all knew that I didn’t meant FRACE as in trace). Our yield ranges from 10 to 20 MM cubic ft per day. Those wells produce at those rates for MANY months before they begin to tail off and the production curve decays. The decay rate is over quite a long period after which it reaches an asymptote and the well will produce for decades. When it is all added up the ratio is FAR less than hundreds of gallons for each gallon (cubic foot) but perhaps not as low as 0.1 to 0.5 gal per cubic foot.
Once again, in PA after we remove what percentage of the frac water flows back, we get what is called produced water, which is typically in the range of somewhere between 100 and maybe 1000 bbl/day. for a well producing 20,000,000 cf/day for 18 months, 1000 bbl per day is a ratio of 0.0021 gal/cf of gas.
Interesting thing about the word ‘frac’. For many years people in the environmental remediation industry have been involved in groundwater remediation projects which involve the stupid useless practice of pumping out contaminated groundwater withi the misguided intent to clean up an aquifer. For the large volumes of water which were (are) withdrawn, storage was needed on sites until it could be characterized for off-site disposal. To get large volumes of storage, that industry found these really neat, wheeled tanks which could be brought to a site empty, used for storage and then emptied into smaller, over-the-road trucks for off-site disposal. Those tanks came from the petroleum industry in the years before hydraulic fracturing was known by the general public (it’s been going on for 60 years now btw). And those tanks are known as ‘FRAC tanks’. Spelled that way, used that way by EPA and every state DEP and citizens group which commented on remedial actions. But now we have to live with FRACK.
You guys can rationalize the mis-spelling all you want – but if you want to come off as knowledgeable, to walk the walk and especially to talk the talk…
The American Chemical Society is still promoting AGW in a mindless sort of way.
http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/policy/publicpolicies/promote/globalclimatechange.html
Therefore everything they do is suspect.
Pretty poor article. First, flow back water is minor. It is also less saline. Produced water, the natural brine that comes up with the oil is extremely saline. People need to drop the obsession with fracking. Normally the brine is reinjected back into the formation. One question I have, if you remove the water from the brine, won’t you get a lot of salt drop out also? This salt can contain NORM, and is a problem if it does. Anyhow, if you have an injection well, produced water is not a problem. By the way, you might be able to do this method with sea water, as it is lower salinity then produced brine.
Tom G(ologist) says:
August 28, 2013 at 3:49 pm
Unlike external facts like whether the world is round or flat, the direction the English language takes is one of the few things that truly is run by consensus. It’s not a fixed thing like the shape of the earth. It’s constantly changing rules, changing spelling, adopting new words as others fall into oblivion, replacing the latest “non-PC” euphemism with a new term that is PC now but in future will be replaced …
For example, if everyone starts using the word “twerking” and agrees on its meaning and the spelling, then that’s what the word means and how it is spelled. No matter what the thwerking industry might say. Logic doesn’t even enter into it. Doesn’t matter if the thwerking advocates say it’s spelled wrong. Usage is what determines English usage and spelling, not the protest of a minority. In a way it’s the perfect democracy. And when the usage is 100-to-1 against you (as it is), the ship has already sailed.
w.
Willis Eschenbach says:
August 28, 2013 at 8:49 pm
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Willis, in invoking “twerking” (spell check hates it), you went too far.
Your point is taken, but that one won’t last ? No way !!
Dear Tom G,
Intrepid, noble fighter for truth. I am so sorry. Perhaps, you should have a little mourning service to help you process the demise of “frac’ing”. It is (I’m not being sarcastic) a bummer that the “best” or most accurate term is not always the term that wins out in the end. If you choose to continue your crusade, more power to you. I don’t have the emotional energy to spare to fight all the battles I could fight for accuracy and truth. Be kind to yourself. Life’s short. If you are not having fun and you do not have a duty to do what you’re doing — don’t do it.
If fighting for accuracy in language is fun for you, great! Just bear in mind that no one is “facsing” anything.
Someone who cares about your happiness,
Janice
I agree with President Jackson that it’s a poor mind that can think of but one way to spell a word.
Tom G(ologist) says:
August 28, 2013 at 3:49 pm
“”As someone stated once, the overwhelming consensus of virtually all people that the world was flat never reduced its sphericity by a single jot.”
Since the classical period of Greece the belief in a flat Earth was virtually non-existent in the Western world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth
(just a remark)
As an aside to the fracing – fracking argument, has anyone else noted that even though it is an abbreviation, designed to speed up the way it is written, it is almost always followed by the phrase ‘short for hydraulic fracturing’. Wouldn’t it stop the argument, and shorten the text, if
everyone just wrote ‘hydraulic fracturing’ to begin with? I suppose the media love the short version because of all the possibilities for double-entendres that it opens up.
As an after-thought, if the industry had abbreviated hydraulic fracturing to hydrating, could we have avoided a lot of the negative publicity?
That reminds me of the old question, ‘what’s the difference between a giraffe and a JCB? – A JCB has hydraulics.’
Tom G: I think you are correct in “frac” versus “frack”, however, you may lose on common usage. Just watch a chemist wince when you say toluLEAN, when you mean toluene. I’ve used “frac” tanks, but I believe the “frac” in this one is for “fractionation” the term for separating immiscible liquids in these tanks.
As far as water balance on a hydraulic fracturing site, I’d leave it to the folks that do that. I’m willing to bet the water treating companies are standing by to help you out.
Tadchem: CC5, CC6? cyclo-pentane, cyclo-hexane refinery jargon? I’ve never seen them expressed that way and once thought I knew something about cycloalkanes.
Willis,
you are correct about the English language spelling and usage are arbitary and changing (although spelling changes are less frequent since Dr Johnson).
For meaning Change I give you as examples
Artificial
Nice
Tell
Backlog
Awful
there must be dozens if not hundreds of others.
When I was a test engineer for a Telecoms equipment manufacturing we had lots of problems with early DRAMS (particularly 1K and 4K varieties). When the 64K DRAM arrived there was a lot of discussion with non-technical management as to whether it should be known as 64K or 65K. In this particular instance the nerds won. However the public (in the UK at least) is exposed daily to pictures of banners with the word spelt fracking (as it was in Gasland), therefore it will fracking when entered in the OED.
“Bob Greene says:
August 29, 2013 at 6:21 am
Tom G: I think you are correct in ‘frac’ versus ‘frack'”
Yes, he is. The usage “frac” is fine in English, as are both “tic” and “tick.”
Where the industry got into trouble is when they then tried to override one of the few 99%+ accuracy-rated pronunciation rules that exist, the “Rule of c,” which states:
The letter ‘c’ when followed by one of the letters ‘e,’ ‘i,’ or ‘y’ represents the /s/ sound; otherwise it represents the /k/ sound.
Thus we have: race, racing, racy where the ‘c’ represents /s/, but we also have:
cat (followed by ‘a’)
cot (followed by ‘o’)
cut (followed by ‘u’)
sick (followed by ‘k’)
account (1st ‘c’ followed by ‘c’; second ‘c’ followed by ‘o’)
sick (followed by ‘k’)
tic (followed by nothing)
which all follow the rule of c, and words like “accent” and “accident” in which the first ‘c’ is followed by another ‘c’, and the second ‘c’ is followed by one of the three letters in the rule, making their English pronunciation equivalent to aksent and aksident.
In fact, most of the spellings where you find a single letter “k” in a word are cases where using a “c” would violate the rule of c. Thus, we have words like “keep,” “kiss,” “Kyle,” “skeet,” “skip,” and “sky.” The common spelling for the /k/ sound, “ck,” is a convention used to avoid exactly the problem introduced by trying to use the word “fracing.” The “ck” marks the sound preceding it (almost always a single vowel), as the short vowel sound.
The scientists should stick with “frac” when used that way, but yield to “fracked” and “fracking” and, if necessary, to “fracky.” After all, though we “picnic,” we also go “picnicking.” Best not to panic, or start panicking, get all panicky about this. Just recognize the initial English spelling error and move on, as the rest of the world has.
Incidentally, that’s American English. The few exceptions to the rule are (ironically) the British spelling “sceptic,” the foreign football, “soccer” (which, by rule, should either be pronounced “sockser” or spelled “socker” and the Spanish spelling “Tucson” which by rule should be pronounced “Tuckson.” With “sceptic,” Americans replaced the “c” with a “k”. They just accepted the other two examples. There are others, but the rule is easily one of the most accurate (American) English rules of pronunciation. Hence, the Google survey results.
And yes, this is one of my main areas of interest: http://www.ontrackreading.com
Dirk, you beat me to it. Yes, educated Westerners have known the world was round since the ancient Greeks, despite the myths about how Columbus discovered it.
A similar myth is how Enlightenment philosophers shook Europe out of the “Dark Ages.” Pure baloney, as careful historians have established in the last quarter century. The so-called Dark Ages were a time of scientific and industrial advance, where universities were established for the first time in the history of the world and modern science began.
Rod Everson is correct, and Tom’s “industry convention” is contrary to the rule.
By the way, round media are spelt ‘disc’ in the recording industry, and ‘disk’ in the computer world. The latter makes little ones easy (‘diskettes’), where ‘discette’ would be confusing.
/Mr Lynn
Yes, Anthropic (at 1:43pm today) re: “Pure baloney, as careful historians have established in the last quarter century.”
And, as of at least 75 years ago a careful literature scholar, C. S. Lewis of Oxford and later of Cambridge, often said, “There was no such thing as ‘The Renaissance.'” And yet, the O.H.E.L. volumes (one of which he wrote) refer over and over to “Medieval and RENAISSANCE literature,” to which there was nothing Lewis could say (except, perhaps, “Oh, hell.”).
@ur momisugly Sandy in Limousin — Nice essay. #(:)) You would, I think, greatly enjoy C. S. Lewis’ lectures “Studies in Words.” He discusses several such words as those you listed above.
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BTW, a question I’ve long wondered about… Why do the British pronounce Latin-based language word imports with a flattened “a” or a non-silent “t” or a British version of French (e.g., “taco” rhymes with “wacko” and “wigwam” rhymes with “wig dam” (is Don Juan still Don Joo-uhn?) and “valet” rhymes with “mallet” and “jaguar” is “jag-yoo-wahr”). In the American version of English, more of the foreign words seem to come in with the same vowels as in the original language. It is not of great importance, that is certain, but I wondered whether it was a deliberate attempt of the British to sneer at the “foreign” word and exert their propriety over the term by severely altering its pronunciation? Like many of us Americans did with that rat “Saddam” (rhyming it with “madam” just to dis him) Hussein.
Of course, there is Loss An-gel-iss …… (and tons of others — not Chico, though, lol). Hm.
It seems ‘fraccing’ is the 2nd most popular spelling with 51,500 google hits.
The first 3 hits are the Queensland government, wikipedia, and an Australian oil and gas company. I have also seen fraccing used in the UK by commentators at Bishop Hill’s site.
‘Siccing’ has the same linguistic origin.