Distillation Process Is Proposed for Cleaning Up the Very Dirty Waste Water Created by Fracking

Claiming that its method turns the very salty waste of hydraulic fracturing into a product that can be sold as bottled water, a company called Altela is seeking investors for its distillation process.

“Our technology is not new. It has been around for four and a half billion years. So we clean water in the same way that Mother Nature has been cleaning water for a long time,” said Todd Hand, vice president of marketing and sales.

Promoters of the plan say that the distilled frack water can be discharged into rivers and streams, into the ground, or sold as bottled water.

The interesting part of the proposal is that Atela representative Todd Hand  seems say that the process is virtually energy free.  Mr. Hand claims that Altela is offering a more affordable alternative to water treatment. Because conventional thermal distillation processes rely on high temperature and high pressure units, “They have to use really expensive metals in their unit. We get away from that because we don’t use high temperature and high pressure,” he said.

Mr. Hand also said Altela’s technology is a zero energy gained, zero energy lost process. “We’re able to recapture [the] energy and use it to heat up the next drop of water,” he said.

Exactly how that might work is not explained.

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When You Turn On Your Electric Hair Dryer, You’re Burning Water

A  report by River Network reveals that thermoelectric energy (including coal, nuclear and natural gas) is the fastest growing use of freshwater resources in the country. The report, Burning Our Rivers: The Water Footprint of Electricity,says that for every gallon of water used in an average household, five times more water (40,000 gallons each month) is used to provide that home with electricity via hydropower turbines and fossil fuel power sources.  That means every time we flip on the television or crank up the air conditioning, it sends more potable water down the drain.Although coal, nuclear power, and natural gas have been praised as the “cheapest” ways to produce electricity, this assessment does not take water use and consumption into account. The report found that a single MWh of electricity generated by coal withdraws approximately 16,052 gallons of water from the environment and consumes approximately 692 gallons of water.Nuclear power withdraws approximately 14,881 gallons and consumes 572 gallons of water per MWhOn average, while natural gas withdraws approximately 6,484 gallons and consumes approximately 172 gallons of water per MWh of electricity produced.

These figures do not include water that is wasted by contaminating drinking water supplies.

According to an excellent article by Beth Buczynski:

Fossil fuels are as archaic as the rock from which they’re pried. It’s time to enter the 21st century of energy production. It’s time to acknowledge that coal, gas, and nuclear power will not be able to meet the needs of future generations. It’s time to start rebuilding an electrical infrastructure that takes into account its impact on surrounding systems, including water and wildlife. Only then will we be able to ensure a clean, healthy, well-hydrated future for our children.

Burning Our Rivers

Strapped for Cash, Cities Face the Temptation to Become Dumping Grounds for the Nasty By-Products of Fracking

Officials of the Niagara Falls water utility seized on a new moneymaking idea last year: treat toxic waste from natural-gas drilling at its sewage-treatment plant once hydrofracking gets under way in New York State. The plan is tempting, because the wealthy fracking industry puts out lots of very nasty waste water and  there is cash to be made in getting rid of it.

But the idea of having fracking fluids trucked into the city, treated and discharged into the Niagara River was frightening to  local residents, many of whom still recall the Love Canal environmental crisis of the 1970s. So in a one-sided vote, the Niagara Falls City Council  rejected the proposal,  banning the treatment, transport, storage and disposal of drilling fluids within city limits.

Most of the waste water from conventional gas wells in NY is disposed of by standard sewage treatment plants.  Some of it is used to de-ice roads or to tamp down dust.  However, the Environmental Protection Agency has said that the state should ban the use of fracking brine on roads because pollutants could make their way into aquifers and waterways through infiltration and storm water runoff.

There is no clear-cut plan for dealing with the tremendous waste production from the thousands of fracking sites that seem to loom as the future problem of New York and other states.  Should we not demand a stop now in the process until a reasonable plan of waste disposal is in place?  Nuclear waste, after all, has been collecting for decades and we still don’t have a workable plan for what to do with it.

More of this from the New York Times