Engineering Design 100 – Section 020

Pennsylvania State University

Group 5: Pump it up

Chevron Fracking Project- Water

Treatment Mobile Truck Trailer System

Project Engineers: Paula Espinoza pxe19@psu.edu Rob Saracino rjs6221@psu.edu Max Histch mjh6079@psu.edu Bo Hui bxh82@psu.edu Submitted to: Dr. Smita Bharti: 12/12/2016

pg. 1

Table of Contents

1. Executive Summary………………………………………………………..2

2. Introduction and Problem Statement……………………………………....3

3. Definition of Sustainability………………………………………………..4

4. Background………………………………………………………………..4

5. Customer needs…………………………………………………………....5

6. Concept generation………………………………………………………. 6

7. Concept development and selection……………………………………....7

8. Final design…………………………………………………………….....8

- Prototype………………………………………………….……..10

- Cost Analysis …………………………………………………....11

- Regulatory considerations…………………………………….…12

- Public opinion……………………………………………….…...13

9. Conclusion………………………………………………………………..15

10. References………………………………………………………………..16

pg. 2

Executive Summary

The present report provides an analysis that covers an alternative plan for Chevron to clean the

brine water produced in the fracking process. The team designed a Mobile Truck Trailer Filtration System

which carries out the filtration of the water as well as its transportation. The design consisted on five trailer

tanks: the first four, conducting a different filtration process, and the last one, serving for storage and later

transportation. The calculated plausible cost of the project depicts the extensive work needed to achieve a

completely pure and clean water, which involves filtration devices, trucks, management, and reparations.

Along these lines, the team built a model that has the power to provide clean water for three purposes: reuse

it for further fracking processes, make drinkable water, and release it into local bodies of water for common

human use.

pg. 3

Introduction and Problem Statement

Pump It Up Industries envisions the future of fracking water to be reused and recycled, eliminating

the need for immediate disposal. In order to reach this goal, we will investigate different ways to create a

network of marketable possibilities including industrial application, general municipal use, and even

drinkable water.

Currently, 70% of the water is reused. However, the remaining 30% is disposed of with toxic

concentrations. One disposal route is injection into deep wells, and a good deal of flow back is transported

to be injected deep underground. But this method has its own problems — the injection process has the

inconvenient habit of causing an earthquake every now and again. Another alternative is waste treatment:

removing the contaminants and then dumping the “clean” water into a nearby sewer or river. But you can’t

use a standard municipal water treatment plant to treat flow back and produced water as those facilities are

just not designed to handle the level of contamination, especially radioactivity, found in these waters.

An ideal scenario would be to convert 100% of the water used in the process of fracking into

reusable and consumable water. In addition to the water, solid constituents will be filtered and distributed

to help account for a near 0% Brine water waste output. Pump It Up Industries will minimize the

environmental damage fracking causes, and help the world get closer to a sustainable way of life.

pg. 4

Definition of Sustainability

In general, sustainability is the ability to maintain a system at a certain rate or output level. During the

process of designing the system, the group took into consideration the sustainability factor in order to make

it plausible in the eyes of chevron.

Background

Chevron Corporation is an American multinational energy corporation. One of the successor

companies of Standard Oil, it is headquartered in San Ramon, California, and active in more than 180

countries. Chevron is engaged in every aspect of the oil, natural gas, and geothermal energy industries,

including hydrocarbon exploration and production; refining, marketing and transport; chemicals

manufacturing and sales; and power generation. The corporation is also popular because its engagement in

the process of fracking. [1]

Fracking, also known as hydraulic fracturing, is the process of injecting fracking liquid at a high

pressure into subterranean rocks, to retrieve and extract natural gas and oil. As a result of this process, brine

water is released. This substance is the naturally occurring salty water that comes out from the underground.

This energy intensive process can become very harmful to the environment, resulting in the risk of ground

and surface water pollution, air pollution, and the triggering of earthquakes. Thus, fracking has become a

very controversial topic in today's society. However, it is because the process is misunderstood by the

public. “Environmentalists storm capitals over it, demanding increased regulations, and oil and gas

company employees and officials scratch their heads — they’ve been using the same process in oil and gas

drilling for 60 years without widespread incidents” [2]

After a well starts producing gas, there is the need to haul the produced brine water off site.

Currently, Chevron produces at a rate of forty barrels per day (per well) with a concentration of 40,000 ppm

of total dissolved solids. And the company hauls the water off site to be treated or injected into approved

disposal wells. Therefore, Chevron encouraged all Engineering Design 100 students from Penn State

University to elaborate an idea to properly treat the water on-site to produce marketable by-products. [3]

pg. 5

Customer Needs

Before the design of the different concepts, certain target specifications were established, in order

to achieve the satisfaction of the customer. Considering the customers as the Chevron Industry, the

community nearby the fracking zone, and the government. Some of the needs the presented were obtained

through chevron’s specifications, environmental laws, and common sense from the team members. The

specifications for the project are:

Table 1. Customer needs and target specifications

Sustainable The process and solution must be fundable

Marketable use for

brine water

· Reuse for fracking

· Bottled water

· General human water needs

Marketable use for

brine

· Calcium chloride and other salts can be distributed for industrial

use, such as maintain roadways in winter months across America.

· Rock formations can be distributed to quarries who can sell it

for further industrial use (road construction, landscaping…etc.).

EPA compliance “clean water act”: the quality and pollution statistics must in

compliance with the Law

Stakeholders · Chevron: Need to have a sufficient return on investment to keep

them happy.

· EPA: Need to comply with the law and basic moral decisions

· State Gov. and local pollutions

· The local people

pg. 6

Concept Generation

Table 2. Classification tree

Different ideas regarding concepts and designs to elaborate a water filtration system were

provided by each member of the team in order to hold a variety of options, evaluate and analyze each of

them, and finally make a decision. The team came up with five different designs: a large stationary plant,

multiple stationary plants, an innovative pipe filtration system, a water filtration by freezing process, and

a mobile truck trailer filtration. Each of the concepts took into account the customer needs, regulations,

and the brainstorming from the classification tree.

pg. 7

Concept Selection

A concept scoring matrix was conducted to evaluate and consider the best option of design,

considering a list of criteria. Some of them, with a higher weight than others, depending on its relevancy to

the team’s main objective. For example, the most important and valued criteria for the project was how

well the system filtered the water, as seen by the 25% of the total weight in Table 3 below. The criteria for

which the team established the least emphasis on was the overall cost. Although the cost was important to

consider in order to make the project plausible, the team did not want to let it restrict the options when

designing the system and is therefore why it was assigned the lowest weighted value.

Table 3. Concept Scoring. The data below shows the weight and rating of each concept design, based on

each criteria.

After the completion of the concept scoring, the results were totaled and the Design Five, the Mobile

Truck Trailer Filtration, resulted to be the best option for the achievement of the objective.

pg. 8

Final Design

After conducting all the previous research depicted above, the final design implements a five tank

mobile filtration system. The system is comprised of 5 trailer sized filtration tanks that can store a total of

30,000 gallons each. The first 4 tanks are assigned a specific step in the filtration processes, with the 5th

and final tank storing the filtered water. All tanks, as seen in Figure 2 and Figure 3 are designed to function

as the back of a typical eighteen-wheel transport vehicle. This allows the filtration system to be moved from

one fracking site to another with minimal effort.

Figure 2. 3D Sketch of the final design. Perspective 1.

Figure 3. 3D Sketch of the final design. Perspective 2.

pg. 9

Figure 4. System Diagram.

Each step on the systems diagram was depicted as the different filtrations phases the water goes through

after pumped directly from the on sight fracking pad. These steps are as follow:

1. The coarse filter: activated carbon can to absorb those particulate matters including sediment, rust,

algae, suspended solids, micro fibers and other particulate impurities, visible to the naked eye. And

there is a pressure sensor on the bottom of the tank. Once the weight of the substances reaches the

certain level, the iron gauze network with substance will move upward from the bottom to collect

those to another container.

2. A sedimentation tank: further remove those visible substances follow closely by the coarse filter.

And the pressure sensor and the iron gauze network work as those in coarse filter system.

3. A fine filter: includes a process of chemical reactions as follows. Lime is added to the brine, making

lime calcium hydroxide and magnesium ions in the brine (Mg2 +) reaction of magnesium

hydroxide. The Brine removes magnesium ions (Mg2 +), an excess of calcium hydroxide (Ca (OH)

2) in the brine sodium sulfate (Na2SO4), into harsh sodium hydroxide (NaOH); the second step is

the removal of magnesium ions (Mg2 + brine) after they pass into the flue gas. The flue gas being

carbon dioxide (CO2). Brine caustic sodium hydroxide and generation after sodium carbonate brine

reacted with the calcium ions (Ca2 +) produce calcium carbonate (CaCO3) precipitate, removing

bittern contains calcium ions (Ca2 +); The third step of the first step is to collect slurry produced

in the second step; a fourth step of recovering the first step and the second step of the processing

After refining brine. [4]

4. Chlorine added: the last step of disinfection for cleaning the bacterial and microbes and the chloride

react with water generate the acid(HClO3) that is extremely broken down.

pg. 10

5. Storage tank: there is a water quality monitor inside each tank. If the water quality is qualified, then

the water can be provided for local citizens.

Prototype

After selecting the preeminent concept, the team was required to build a prototype that could

physically represent the ideas.

The model effectively depicts each step developed in the system diagram and the final design,

including all of the phases of the filtration system for which the water has to go through. The prototype was

built basing on the criteria utilized in the Concept Scoring Matrix. However, evidently, some of the criteria

taken into consideration could not be explicitly represented, such as the effectiveness, the overall cost, the

compliance with EPA.

Figure 1. The prototype

pg. 11

Cost Analysis

Table1. The Table below represents the cost analysis of the entire project, divided into different aspects

and considerations

Project

Area

Common Industry Practice

Description Cost

Coarse

Filter

In order to clean the

visual substances and

the smell and colorful

gases

Assume $100,000~200,000

Includes the use of materials （Stainless Steel）to

make the tank, the activated carbon iron gauze network

，and the electricity

Sediment

Tank

Condense those soluble

substances and settle

those insoluble

substances

Assume $50,000~100,000

Includes the use of the materials (Stainless Steel) to

make the tank, iron gauze network and electricity.

And the transportation fee to move the precipitation to

industries

Fine

Filter

Generate the

precipitation then

transport it to industry

Assume $200,000~300,000

Includes the use of materials (Stainless Steel) to make

the tank, the chemicals (Lime and Carbon Dioxide) used

to clean those harmful substances in the brine water,

electricity, iron gauze network, regularly cleaning fee

and the transportation fee.

Chlorine

added

To clean the

Bacterial and

microbes

Assume $100,000~200,000

Includes the use of the materials (Stainless Steel) to

make the tank and the chlorine

Storage

Tank

To storage the clean

water

Assume $50,000~200,000

Includes the use of the materials (Stainless Steel) to make

the tank, Water quality monitor and transportation fee.

Although the process appears to be highly expensive, it illustrates the importance and the work needed

achieve a completely pure and clean water, which involves filtration devices, trucks, management, and

reparations.

pg. 12

Regulatory Considerations

The environmental, public, political and federal regulations are paramount for the development of

every project. These projects should meet the regulations in order to achieve the objective without hurting

the environment, the community and each individual.

With the oil and gas industry’s use of hydraulic process (fracking), concerns over the environmental

impact of these operations have increased. Thus, state regulations were established. State regulations related

to these operations typically focus on site design, drilling procedures, well design and specifications,

regulatory oversight/monitoring, and handling of materials and wastes.

Ongoing groundwater or surface water testing is generally not required by regulation. On a case-

by-case basis permits can be written to require ongoing monitoring, but regulatory monitoring

activities focus on operational controls rather than monitoring environmental impact.

If surface water discharges or reuse of flowback are allowed, they are regulated under NPDES.

Treatment is typically performed by wastewater treatment facilities.

The regulations for the state of Pennsylvania regarding the ongoing groundwater, surface water and the

water reuse are the following:

For the groundwater and surface water, there are no additional testing regulations specific to shale/fracking

operations. And for the liquid waste and fracking fluids, the waste handling plan associated with the permit

must describe handling procedures. Wastewater Analysis required by PADEP Form 26R includes:

Acidity, Alkalinity (Total as CaCO3), Specific Conductance, pH, Hardness (Total as CaCO3)

Metals: Aluminum, Arsenic, Barium, Beryllium, Boron, Cadmium, Calcium, Chromium,

Cobalt, Copper, Iron – Dissolved & Total, Lead, Lithium, Magnesium, Manganese, Mercury,

Molybdenum, Nickel, Selenium, Silver, Sodium, Strontium, Thorium, Uranium, Zinc

Ammonia Nitrogen

Benzene, Toluene

Biochemical Oxygen Demand, Chemical Oxygen Demand

Bromide, Chloride, Sulfate

Ethylene Glycol

pg. 13

Gross Alpha, Gross Beta

MBAS (Surfactants)

Nitrite-Nitrate Nitrogen, and TKN

Oil & Grease

Phenolics (Total)

Radium 226, Radium 228

Total Dissolved Solids, Total Suspended Solids [5]

Thoughts On Public Opinion

Based on a recent poll taken in 2016, 51% of the of the United States answered in opposition to

fracking as a means to maintain our current energy demands. This near perfect split in the public’s opinion

on fracking brings to light just how divided our nation is on this issue. While each side produces sound

arguments and provide equally important evidence, it is important cater to both viewpoints when designing

an alternative system involved in the fracking industry.

To cater to those in favor of fracking, as means to maintain our energy demands, is relatively

simple. The solution being to frack, and frack efficiently. Those in favor of fracking understand the

necessity to supply the country with the basic amounts of energy in order to function. They also understand

the consequences of fracking, however consider in their view that meeting our nation's energy demands are

worth these consequences.

Those opposed to fracking, hold the opinion that the pros do not outweigh the cons. Because there

are quite a few cons, this valid argument must also be considered when developing new technology used in

the fracking industry. One problem that we as designers focused on in trying to improve, was that of water

use and water contamination. According to “Climate Connections” an analysis posted by Yale University,

more than 15 million Americans have had a fracking operation within a mile of their home. Still, that means

that a small proportion of people shoulder the burden and downsides, with no real compensation for this

intrusive new industrial presence. The solution proposed is to try to minimize the industrial presence and

the impact fracking has on local communities. Many key design features the team came up with in the water

treatment process focus on reducing these industrial impacts in order to cater to this side of the argument.

pg. 14

With that said, the final design is expected and created to be accepted and environmentally friendly,

since it prevents the waste of the brine water. It provides diverse uses of this substance, such as reuse it for

fracking, filtering to obtain drinkable water and release it into local bodies of water. Moreover, it uses the

gravity force as the source of energy to pump the water into the different tanks, making it more sustainable.

In conclusion, public opinion is very important when designing new methods for fracking, specifically the

treatment of water contamination. As an engineer, public opinion has a profound influence on the design

specifications and process. [6]

pg. 15

Conclusion

Chevron partnered with Penn State to enhance learning and its application in the real world.

This project emphasized prevalent problems associated with fracking, as well as current methods

to reduce its negative impact on the environment. Tasked with 4 different problems, this report

focused on the excess brine water and its filtration method. This project teaches the importance of

communication, as well as the following the engineering process that is responsible for the world

around.

pg. 16

References

1. Hydrauling Fracturing. Hydraulicfracturing,com. Unlocking America’s Natural Gas Resources.

Retrieved from:

http://www.hydraulicfracturing.com/?gclid=Cj0KEQiAsrnCBRCTs7nqwrm6pcYBEiQAcQSznP

_Oh6e9UIYw5lI2mNJ4kFNOHqPYzCB7Pf71ULRxMlcaAhMR8P8HAQ#/?section=jobs-and-

the-economy

2. Dunn, S (October 14, 2016). Fracking 101: Breaking down the most important part of today’s oil, gas

drilling. Greeleytribune.com. Retrieved from:

http://www.greeleytribune.com/news/local/fracking-101-breaking-down-the-most-important-part-

of-todays-oil-gas-drilling/

3. Chevron Corporation (2001-2006). Hydraulic fracturing. Chevron.com. Retrieved from:

https://www.chevron.com/operations/shale

4. Anmeldung (October 22, 2008). Technological process for purifying bittern. Google.com. Retrieved

from: https://www.google.ch/patents/CN101289200A?cl=en

5. ALS. State Fracking Regulations. Alsglobal.com. Retrieved from:

http://www.alsglobal.com/en/Our-Services/Life-Sciences/Environmental/Capabilities/North-

America-Capabilities/USA/Oil-and-Gasoline-Testing/Oil-and-Gas-Production-and-Midstream-

Support/Fracking-Regulations-by-State

6. Wihbey, J (May 27, 2015). Pros and Cons of Fracking: 5 Keys. Yaleclimateconnections.com. Retrieved

from: http://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2015/05/pros-and-cons-of-fracking-5-key-issues/