Thursday, May 9, 2013

Sionix Updates Flowback Water Treatment Project

Sionix Corporation announced today that it has completed the second and final demonstration phase of testing its proprietary water treatment technology in the Williston Basin of North Dakota.

The processing facility, located in Dickinson, North Dakota, has successfully treated production and flowback water from drilling and fracking operations in the Bakken Shale. The first round of testing, completed in January 2013, was done with the participation of Clear Water Services. Laboratory analysis was performed by two independent third party testing laboratories in North Dakota and California. Test results showed an average reduction in turbidity of 98 percent. A total of 41 samples of production and flowback water showed influent turbidities as high as 10,875 nephelometric turbidity units (NTU's) and treated effluent turbidities as low as 3.1 NTU. Total suspended solids were reduced by 80 percent and test results showed reductions in barium, calcium, iron, magnesium, aluminum and strontium.


John Mandelin of Clear Water reported, "Treatment testing at the Sionix North Dakota Bakken facility showed a significant reduction of turbidity and suspended solids. Chemical treatment also resulted in substantial reduction in aluminum, phosphorus, magnesium, bicarbonate, hydrocarbons and BTEX."


In April 2013, Sionix began a second round of field testing after modifying equipment and its testing protocol based on information and analysis gleaned from earlier test results. The treatment process consisted of initial residence time, pH control and chemical pre-treatment, clarification, filtration and the patented Sionix Dissolved Air Flotation ("DAF") system. The objective of the test was to demonstrate the ability to treat commercial volumes (up to 225 gpm, the equivalent of 324,000 gallons per day) of production and flowback water and generate treated brine that could be recycled for use in fracking. Several variations in treatment protocols were used. Water samples from the various stages of the process have been received in Houston where they are being analyzed by an independent third party laboratory.


Source: Sionix

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