CarboNet chemistry: Efficient, inexpensive treatment for produced water

For frac sake.

Fracking, like much of O&G, operates in remote locations with little access to water and crews that are spread thin managing and monitoring make-down over dozens of sites.

Why it matters: Producers who rely on make-down rely on vast quantities of water to mix PAM, and the constant attention of crews who are forced to juggle wonky equipment, outmoded chemicals, and inconsistent dosing.

Water woes: Despite producing enormous amounts of effluent water from fracking, producers rely on freshwater for make-down: a process that’s time-consuming and, given water scarcity and remote oil fields, expensive to obtain and ship.
Make-down breakdown: PAM is an outmoded chemical with weak bonds that requires constant babysitting to ensure semi-consistent flocs, a process that often runs foul and leads to overtime, gummed up equipment, malfunctions, and NPT.

CarboNet’s SimpleFloc removes make-down and the associated costs and headaches:

Requires no make-down and plugs directly into your lines, eliminating the need for make-down equipment and maintenance.
Offers a forgiving dosage window so workers don’t have to babysit the pumps or experiment with complex dosing regimes.
Cuts PAM/polymer by up to 80%—a gain for the P&L and toxicity limits.
Acts quickly and produces consistent results, leading to predictable costs and reliable KPIs.
Cost-competitive with liquid emulsion flocculants, even at a 4:1 ratio.
Overall: reduces CAPEX, OPEX, HS&E incidents, and emissions—while improving your margins.

The bottom line: O&G operators need simple, inexpensive solutions to manage dozens of remote sites without having to truck-in expensive freshwater for make-down or worry about crews bunking up the system with inconsistent flocs. Removing make-down entirely dramatically changes treatment time, performance, and margins.

Reference project

New regulations required operators to recycle more water and dispose less, leading a major E&P in the Permian to overhaul their treatment.

New rules: New Mexico regulators tightened their water recycling requirements, forcing an E&P operating on 800,000 acres in the Permian to simultaneously increase the quality of its treated water while reducing its per barrel treatment cost.

Prior to the new regulations, the operator used a mix of oxidizer, coagulant, and flocculant to treat produced water—an expensive and complex scenario that struggled under the new regime.
The flocculant required make-down and created inconsistent flocs, forcing crews to babysit rigs, regularly caused mis-dosing of the other chemicals, and gumming up filters and presses.

Behind the scenes: CarboNet’s SimpleFloc, a no make-down flocculant adopted by operators in the Permian, was recommended as a solution.

SimpleFloc’s plug-and-play chemistry had the immediate effect of reducing costs while improving treatment:

Coagulant reduced 90%
Flocculant dosing cut 30%
Oxidizer cut 50%

Additionally:

Water for makedown was removed, reducing freshwater drawdown 20% (and cutting trucking costs and their associated emissions).
Effluent quality was boosted, with sludge reduced by 50%.
OPEX was greatly improved. With make-down removed, crew costs were cut 35%.
Significantly less chemicals were introduced into the operating envelope, ensuring no permits were breached
Crews enjoyed safer working conditions not having to deal with dry make-down dust or slips from emulsion slop

The bottom line: CarboNet chemistry shaved millions off the P&L and optimized an otherwise inefficient treatment process.