Browsing by Subject "Improved E-MTU model"
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Item Reverse osmosis-based water management for US shale fields(2018-09-11) Kar, Aritra; Bahadur, VaibhavNatural gas worth upto 50 billion USD (4% of global production) is flared in oilfields globally, with the US ranked 4th among top flaring nations. Venting and flaring of gas are very common, due to absence of economically viable alternatives. This waste gas can instead be used to produce water on an industrial scale. This study analyzes and compares the technical performance of three methods to produce water using excess natural gas. The first method involves using this gas to power reverse osmosis systems that treat flowback water from oil-gas production wells. While reverse osmosis has primarily been used for desalination, it is possible to use it to treat flowback water and brackish water up to certain total dissolved solids (TDS) levels. The second method involves using this waste gas to power thermal desalination units to treat flowback and brackish water. The third technique uses waste gas-powered refrigeration systems to produce the cooling capacity to enable large-scale dehumidification-based water production from the atmosphere. This method does not rely upon any water sources but is instead strongly dependent on ambient weather conditions. The work develops an improved version of the effectiveness-mass transfer units model to quantify the technical performance of excess natural-gas based reverse osmosis systems. The technical performance of reverse osmosis systems is compared with the other two methods. The advantages and limitations of these three methods is discussed and analyzed from a technical and techno-economic standpoint. The results of this work suggest that the attractiveness of these methods is location-specific and depends on certain technical and environmental parameters associated with the three water production technologies.