Techno-economic analysis of hydraulic fracking flowback and produced water treatment in supercritical water reactor

The use of hydraulic fracturing for shale oil and gas development generates large quantities of flowback and produced (F/P) water as by-products. The current high treatment cost of F/P water inhibits development and profitability of shale oil and gas. The Integrated Precipitative Supercritical (IPSC) process, developed at Ohio University, could remediate F/P water produced from hydraulic fracturing with significantly lower costs than current practices. The objective of this paper is to present results of a techno-economic analysis of the IPSC process using Aspen® process software and Microsoft Excel. The Aspen® model was used to simulate the IPSC process with its output used as input for the cost analysis. Results indicated an average cost of $6.33 per barrel of F/P water treatment with a possible range from $2.93/bbl to $16.03/bbl determined through sensitivity analyses. The results further indicate that the IPSC process is economically competitive compared to existing practices.