PRAYOG LABS LLC — Department of Energy SBIR Phase I: 20a

Description

With the continuous growth of hydraulic fracking the volume of fracking wastewater that needs to be treated prior to disposal is also growing and is a major challenge and concern for society- The improper treatment of wastewater prior to disposal has multiple consequences to the environment, including contamination to the soil and drinking water source- The recycling and reuse of water and chemicals from the frack water would be a cost saving measure for oil and gas operators- The purpose of this program is to demonstrate the cost and energy impact of an advanced supercritical water treatment (SCWT) process- The SCWT process is a single step process that effectively deals with biological, organic and inorganic contaminants in water-The high temperature conditions destroy any biological matter, while the oxygen oxidizes all organic and biological compounds and precipitates the inorganics- The technical advancements made under this initiative will reduce the energy consumption of the SCWT process, making it very competitive to existing processes such as Reverse Osmosis (RO)-The SCWT process scales very well making it ideal for frack water treatment, municipal water treatment and other applications- Prayog has identified and conducted experiments on several technology advances which can generate, capture and reuse energy within the system to increase the energy efficiency of the system- The principals of Prayog have known that the presence of reducing agents such as hydrocarbons reduces corrosion thereby increasing equipment life- Prayog anticipates that through the combined utilization of a compact microchannel recuperator and turbopump, over 90% of the energy in the outgoing clean water can be recovered and reused- In addition, the external energy heat source needed to bring the water to supercritical state can be replaced with internal energy generated as a result of the reaction between oxygen and the organic and biological contaminants-