Produced water is the water that exists in subsurface formations and is brought to the surface during oil and gas production. The US has vast reserves of oil and natural gas which now are commercially reachable as a result of recent advances in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies. But as more hydraulic fracturing wells come into operation, so does the treatment of large volumes of water used in the process. Water is the base fluid and biggest component used in hydraulic fracturing, its importance remains a critical factor in the operation and economics of shale oil and gas production.
Produced water is typically treated in three stages:
- The primary treatment separates the oil from the water using equipment such as hydrocyclones.
- After the first oil cut, the secondary treatment conditions the produced water for overboard discharge, reinjection or further polishing mainly through Separation & filtration (to bring smaller droplets of oil out of the water). Methods used include induced gas flotation, coalescence and disc stack centrifuges.
- The tertiary treatment uses filtration to polish the remaining oil droplets and solid particles from the stream, which may involve media filtration, biological treatment, and beyond that desalination
The real growth opportunity in the treatment sector is in tertiary treatment and desalination. This is expected to grow faster than the produced water management market as a whole, as a result of the increased reuse of produced water. What this means to nonwoven filter media manufacturers is a fast growing demand in fine particulate and oil droplet filtration, membrane prefiltration, membrane substrates, membrane support and spacing materials.