Beneficial Reuse of Ammonia in Produced Water

Ammonia recovery is an increasingly important subject matter for oil and gas industries given reuse and profit potential. Obtaining oil through a process known as fracking results in a large amount of brine water, known as produced water, which contains fracking fluids, trace amounts of oil, organic compounds, and most importantly, in the context of this task, ammonia. Ammonia gets into this produced water from fossil fuels, decomposed organic matter, discharge, animal waste, and products from the nitrogen cycle. Using a combination of traditional methods and innovative sustainable approaches, ammonia was successfully recovered from simulated produced water. The sustainable approach special to this paper involved the use of wasted concrete from construction sites to raise the pH of the produced water to effectively air strip gaseous ammonia. In this bench scale model, the gaseous ammonia was captured in boric acid to form ammonia borate avoiding the handling of gaseous ammonia. In an ideal industrial setting, the gaseous ammonia would be captured and pressurized to be used or sold as anhydrous ammonia. The remaining solution from the air stripping tower was run through a filtration system to be reused in the fracking process, another industrial setting, or further treatment. From the bench scale, an ammonia recovery efficiency was an average of 0.367% from initial run and 1.27% after being recycled back into the apparatus. The bench scale provides proof of concept to expand upon. Waste concrete successfully raises the pH and could be recycled after being spent in the context of this system in certain paving applications. It is important to note that all operating parameters are dependent on the region in which this design is being used in addition to client specifications such as column height and type of packing material in the air stripper. Climate is important to consider because temperature has a large impact on the efficacy of the air stripper and would affect applications. This apparatus was designed to be run in an arid climate found in the Southwest of the United States such as the Greater Chaco Region in New Mexico or the Permian Basin of Texas where extensive oil and gas fracking operations occur.