Fracking Wastewater Less than Thought, KSU Researcher Finds
KENT, Ohio -- For Lordstown native Brian Lutz, Ph.D., what began as a curiosity while working on his family farm has led him to where he is now: asking critical research questions on issues that involve hydraulic fracturing and shale gas that could affect thousands of Ohioans.
As he grew up on a farm, Lutz spent summers applying nitrogen to cornfields. “I was always stunned at how much it took and always wondered where it went and how it affected the environment,” Lutz said.
Today, as an assistant professor of biogeochemistry in the department of biological sciences at Kent State University, Lutz studies how humans alter the chemistry of their environment. He was hired last November.
His most recent research has focused on the challenges shale gas poses to the environment and the benefits of domestic energy compared to conventional gas production and mountaintop coal mining.
Lutz and colleagues from Duke University recently released a study of hydraulically fractured natural gas wells, which are often perceived as inordinately wastewater intensive. In fact, the study, published in the journal Water Resources Research shows that these wells producing three times less wastewater per unit of gas recovered than conventional wells.
“That surprised us, given the popular perception that hydraulic fracturing creates disproportionate amounts of wastewater,” Lutz said. “But it’s a double-edged sword. On one hand, shale gas production generates less wastewater per unit of gas. On the other hand, because of the massive size of the Marcellus resource, the overall volume of water that now has to be transported and treated is immense. It’s likely going to become the defining challenge for shale gas development in this part of the world.”
If the challenge becomes holding back the production of natural gas to achieve an acceptable volume of wastewater, the logical conclusion may be to restrain conventional production before shale gas production. “That turns our perception of what regulation should potentially do on its head,” Lutz said.
“This is the reality of increasing domestic natural gas production,” said Martin Doyle, professor of river science at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and co-author of the study. “There are significant tradeoffs and environmental impacts whether you rely on conventional gas or shale gas.”
The researchers analyzed gas production and wastewater generation at 2,189 gas wells in Pennsylvania by using publicly available data the industry reported to the state Department of Environmental Protection, in compliance with state law. They conducted their analysis with no external funding.
In hydraulic fracturing, large volumes of water, sand and chemicals are injected deep underground into shale at high pressure to release and extract the natural gas. As the pace of shale gas production grows, so too have concerns about groundwater contamination and what to do with the wastewater. “Our traditional method for getting rid of this wastewater is to inject it back underground, but much of the geology throughout this region is not suitable for underground injection,” Lutz noted.
Lutz and Doyle argue that novel technological and logistical solutions for wastewater management are needed, including better ways to recycle and treat the waste on-site or move it to places where it can be safely disposed, both of which are happening rapidly. “Opponents have targeted hydraulic fracturing as posing heightened risks, but many of the same environmental challenges presented by shale gas production would exist if we were expanding conventional gas production,” Lutz said. “We have to accept the reality that any effort to substantially boost domestic energy production will present environmental costs.”
The ability to recover gas from the enormous reserves in shale formations promises to have an important impact on the economy of Ohio. “Because hydraulic fracturing produces vast quantities of wastewater, there is an immediate need to adopt new technologies and approaches to dealing with the impact of this production on our state’s water resources,” said James Blank, Ph.D., interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Kent State.
“There is still a lot of research that needs to be done to better understand the environmental impacts of shale gas development,” Lutz said. “But any method that we use for harvesting fossil energy from the earth is going to have an environmental footprint, and these new methods that are changing energy production in the United States are not wholly good or bad. They have advantages and disadvantages against conventional methods.”
Lutz and his colleagues are working to develop a framework that will allow comparisons to be made between the environmental effects of hydraulic fracturing and shale gas development to mountaintop coal mining. “We’re situated between coal mining in the Appalachians and hydraulic fracturing in the Northeast," he pointed out. "The role that these important resources will have in America’s energy future will depend on our ability to understand their environmental costs and to be able to weigh tradeoffs among them.”
Lutz earned a bachelor of science degree in biology in 2005 at the College of Wooster and completed a doctorate in biogeochemistry at Duke University in 2011.
SOURCE: Kent State University news service.
Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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