Aqua-Pure is the premier recycler of industrial wastewater in North America.

SHALE GAS

Aqua-Pure is currently operating wastewater treatment facilities in the Barnett Shale (North Texas), Eagle Ford Shale (South Texas) and Marcellus Shale (Pennsylvania/New York), and will begin operations in the Fayetteville Shale (Arkansas) in mid-2011.

Shale gas well completions require a massive hydraulic fracture treatment (known as “fracing”) in which millions of gallons of fresh water are combined with a chemical blend (averaging 60,000 to 120,000 barrels per well) and injected into the rock formation to create millions of tiny fractures that allow trapped gas to flow freely to the well bore.

A significant portion of the injected fluid immediately returns to the surface as contaminated flowback water, replete with sand, clay, polymers, oil, salt and a variety of dissolved solids. In addition, throughout the operating life of the well, contaminated produced water – often including NORM – accompanies the natural gas to the surface.

The traditional method of dealing with both flowback and produced water is to transport the wastewater to deep-well disposal facilities for underground injection. This practice requires producers to first purchase and haul massive quantities of fresh water to the site, truck the resulting wastewater to a disposal well (sometimes tens or even hundreds of miles along narrow, rural roads), pay for disposal, then return empty to the site to repeat the process. In addition to the substantial expense incurred by the operator, increasingly scarce water resources are permanently removed from the environment’s hydrological cycle.

This wasteful and potentially unsustainable practice has drawn unwelcome scrutiny and attention to the industry from the media and environmental activists which, in turn, have prompted demands from state and federal authorities for tighter regulatory control and innovative solutions.

Aqua-Pure addresses these problems by deploying mobile, decentralized recycling facilities and innovative transportation strategies. Our revolutionary evaporator technology converts contaminated water back into distilled water, and has been proven to reduce fresh water supply volumes, water hauling volume and wastewater disposal by up to 90%. This drastically reduces the cost of natural gas production, particularly in areas where fresh water is scarce and/or disposal costs are high.

Unique to Aqua-Pure, our treatment process can be customized to meet the specifications of each individual customer. Some operators choose to receive treated saltwater to dilute with fresh water for fracing adjacent wells; others require fresh water for fracing; and still others prefer that pure distilled water be returned to the environment. Our state-of-the-art evaporator technology can be easily adjusted to deliver any “flavor” of water desired.