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This work presents NETL’s efforts in analyzing the performance and cost of a of water treatment trains for processing produced water. Levelized cost of water (LCOW) and specific energy consumption (SEC) figures are provided for both treatment trains. Permeate compositions are compared to the Type I produced water standards for the state of Texas.
Water scarcity and increased energy demands have put a strong focus on improving industries at the heart of the water–energy nexus. Treatment of oil and gas produced water (PW) can help reduce freshwater consumption during hydraulic fracturing, especially in arid regions, while also removing harmful contaminants from entering the environment. However, it is also difficult to treat because PW contains high concentrations of many environmentally toxic contaminants, which require complex and expensive treatment processes to achieve their removal. To demonstrate the possibility of PW treatment and reuse in the O&G industry, a comprehensive environmental toxicity and water quality analysis throughout a five-process treatment train was performed on high salinity (>120 g/L) Permian basin raw PW. Here, the concentrations of naturally occurring radioactive materials were reduced by over 99%, total organic carbon was reduced by 93%, and inorganic constituents, including total dissolved solids, were reduced by over 99%. Compounds that induced the aryl hydrocarbon receptor and caused cytotoxicity in MCF-7 cells were also removed. Overall, the results of this study show that a short treatment train (five distinct unit processes) can be effective in treating PW to a level suitable for use outside of the oil industry.
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Detrimental biofilms on RO membranes remain a crucial challenge for seawater desalination. Comparative analysis of 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing data revealed differences and commonalities of biofilm communities associated with unit operations in the two largest seawater desalination facilities in the U.S., the Claude "Bud" Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant and the Tampa Bay Seater Desalination facility. At both plants, feedwater collected at a single time point was a poor indicator of the RO membrane communities, which showed far greater taxa diversity. The analysis of prefilter cartridges from the Carlsbad plant revealed similarly high taxon diversity as the RO module biofilms, with relevant differences. Algal sequences were enriched on the prefilter cartridges as were sequences representing Bdellovibrionota, which are predatory bacteria. Sequences representing opportunistic Gammaproteobacteria (i.e., Shewanella, Woesia) were present in significantly higher relative abundance on the RO membranes than in the prefilter cartridges, suggesting growth of certain taxa in the RO modules. Untargeted metabolomics distinguished intra- and inter-desalination plant biofilm samples, highlighting the potential value of this tool for biofilm monitoring. These findings underscore the value of omics tools for effective microbial monitoring, to understand biofouling dynamics within RO desalination plants, and to provide insight for the development of ecologically-informed biofilm control measures.
The Water Technoeconomic Assessment Pipe-Parity Platform (WaterTAP3) was developed under the National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI) to facilitate consistent technoeconomic assessments of desalination treatment trains. The WaterTAP3 is an analytically robust modeling tool that can be used to evaluate water technology cost, energy, environmental, and resiliency tradeoffs across different water sources, sectors, and scales. The model simulates steady-state water treatment train performance and costs including flow and constituent mass balance across unit processes, based on source water conditions, configurations of treatment technologies, and system-level techno-economic assumptions. Users can build a new treatment train by connecting any number of unit processes, specific for their context and system, or selecting a train from the treatment train library. The model contains various technical and cost parameter options for a range of treatment processes and a library of influent water quality characteristics for a variety of source waters and case studies. Users can customize water quality parameters to evaluate the technology performance in their context. The model can be set up for different assessment needs including simulation, optimization, and uncertainty and sensitivity analyses. The results from WaterTAP3 can help identify trade-offs among the different system performance metrics, with insight on how particular technologies or systems promote pipe-parity. The flexibility and comprehensive scope of the tool makes it a promising solution to industry-wide water technoeconomic evaluations, leading to more informed water investment decisions and technologies. As a user-friendly, open-source platform, WaterTAP3 can be used by industry, academia, policymakers, planners, and those with or without extensive analytical experience.
The Water Technoeconomic Assessment Pipe-Parity Platform (WaterTAP3) was developed under the National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI) to facilitate consistent technoeconomic assessments of desalination treatment trains. The WaterTAP3 is an analytically robust modeling tool that can be used to evaluate water technology cost, energy, environmental, and resiliency tradeoffs across different water sources, sectors, and scales. The model simulates steady-state water treatment train performance and costs including flow and constituent mass balance across unit processes, based on source water conditions, configurations of treatment technologies, and system-level techno-economic assumptions. Users can build a new treatment train by connecting any number of unit processes, specific for their context and system, or selecting a train from the treatment train library. The model contains various technical and cost parameter options for a range of treatment processes and a library of influent water quality characteristics for a variety of source waters and case studies. Users can customize water quality parameters to evaluate the technology performance in their context. The model can be set up for different assessment needs including simulation, optimization, and uncertainty and sensitivity analyses. The results from WaterTAP3 can help identify trade-offs among the different system performance metrics, with insight on how particular technologies or systems promote pipe-parity. The flexibility and comprehensive scope of the tool makes it a promising solution to industry-wide water technoeconomic evaluations, leading to more informed water investment decisions and technologies. As a user-friendly, open-source platform, WaterTAP3 can be used by industry, academia, policymakers, planners, and those with or without extensive analytical experience. A publicly available graphical user interface is currently under development.
Municipal water reuse can contribute to a circular water economy in different contexts and with various treatment trains. This study synthesized information regarding the current technological and regulatory statuses of municipal reuse. It provides process-level information on cost and energy metrics for three potable reuse and one nonpotable reuse case studies using the new Water Techno-economic Assessment Pipe-Parity Platform (WaterTAP3). WaterTAP3 enabled comparisons of cost and energy metrics for different treatment trains and for different alternative water sources consistently with a common platform. A carbon-based treatment train has both a lower calculated levelized cost of water (LCOW) ($0.40/m3) and electricity intensity (0.30 kWh/m3) than a reverse osmosis (RO)-based treatment train ($0.54/m3 and 0.84 kWh/m3). In comparing LCOW and energy intensity for water production from municipal reuse, brackish water, and seawater based on the largest facilities of each type in the United States, municipal reuse had a lower LCOW and electricity than seawater but higher values than for production from brackish water. For a small (2.0 million gallon per day) inland RO-based municipal reuse facility, WaterTAP3 evaluated different deep well injection and zero liquid discharge (ZLD) scenarios for management of RO concentrate. Adding ZLD to a facility that currently allows surface discharge of concentrate would approximately double the LCOW. For all four case studies, LCOW is most sensitive to changes in weighted average cost of capital, on-stream capacity, and plant life. Baseline assessments, pipe parity metrics, and scenario analyses can inform greater observability and understanding of reuse adoption and the potential for cost-effective and energy-efficient reuse.
Recent laboratory evaluations demonstrated that further testing of alternative hybrid resins is warranted for their potential use as part of the 200 West Area (200W) pump-and-treat (P&T) remedy. 200W P&T has been treating technetium (Tc) since 2012 and uranium (U) since 2015 via two separate ion exchange (IX) treatment units: a single treatment train (i.e., a three-vessel system) for the removal of uranium utilizing a gel strong base anion (SBA) exchange resin, Dowex 21K; and two parallel treatment trains for the removal technetium using a gel SBA resin, Purolite® A532E. While these resins have been removing these contaminants effectively, new hybrid resins can provide additional benefits of further optimizing the IX treatment unit capacities and addressing additional treatment needs (e.g., Cr(VI)) by removing multiple contaminants simultaneously and/or through specific design configurations. Some of these resins also demonstrated some level of removal for I-129 which would be significant for expansion of the P&T into the 200 East Area. This document provides design recommendations for an intermediate scale test platform (ISTP) to evaluate alternative hybrid IX resin performance under conditions approaching field scale and using 200W P&T process groundwater. Results from the ISTP will provide the technical basis required to inform alternative IX resin selection in future 200W P&T facility operations where the treatment of multiple contaminants of concern may be required.
Combustion residuals and the resulting leachate from storage sites represent a large volume of wastewater in the United States (U.S.) that has not been quantified. Here this work estimates the constituents present, volume of wastewater, and costs of treatment for both combustion residual landfill leachate and the leachate from surface impoundment closures. Combustion residual landfill leachate produced from contact with bituminous coal combustion byproducts is generally predicted to be higher in lithium and manganese, whereas landfill leachate produced from contact with subbituminous coal combustion byproducts is generally predicted to be higher in mercury and vanadium. The annual volume of a single landfill with combustion residual leachate can reach more than 800,000 cubic meters. This leachate represents an annual volume of 26.8–42.8 million cubic meters nationally. Closing surface impoundments can yield between 830 and 1040 cubic meters of leachate nationally for a three-year closure period. Costs as low as $1.5/m 3 or as high as $95/m 3 are observed. Treatment trains will need to remove 72% of total suspended solids (TSS), 87% of arsenic, and 64% of mercury from landfill leachate. When applied to impoundments, these treatment trains would need to remove 97% of arsenic.
This study proposes novel ZLD treatment trains that integrate multi-component chemical precipitation and multi-effect evaporative crystallization for efficient brine management. The methodology emphasizes sustainability by integrating CO₂ for chemical precipitation and reducing environmental impact, exemplified with two case studies: produced water that includes industrial waste heat utilization by adopting the emerging vacuum air-gapped membrane distillation (VAGMD) technology, and brackish groundwater that is abundant in sulphate which undergoes treatment by low-salt-rejection reverse osmosis (LSRRO) with interstage chemical precipitation. Here, this study is the first of its kind to simultaneously account for reducing risk of mineral scaling and effective recovery of valuable solids when incorporating VAGMD and LSRRO in ZLD treatment trains. Using Reaktoro and WaterTAP, both Python-based, open-source platforms, we model the recovery of high-purity magnesium, calcium, and sodium salts while optimizing energy consumption and operational efficiency in proposed ZLD pathways for case studies of produced water and brackish desalination brine management. Validation with experimental and reference data confirms the reliability of the models used. In both case studies, the optimized ZLD process achieves recovery rates of 97%, 99%, and 90% for Mg, Ca, and Na, with purities exceeding 99%, and brine volume reduced to less than 4% of the initial feed flow.
The overall objective of this project is the development of a lab-on-a-chip (LOC) electrochemical sensor capable of accurately measuring heavy metal (lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd), and arsenic (As)) concentrations in complex aqueous streams such as wastewater. The specific goals include: i) identify how heavy metal speciate and transform during the different stages of the wastewater treatment train, and explore pre-treatment methods that will de-complex heavy metals, making them available to ASV, ii) develop appropriate electrodes for ASV using organic/inorganic nanomaterials, and iii) integrate pre-treatment steps and specialized electrodes into an LOC sensor device capable of autonomously determining heavy metal concentrations in complex wastewater streams.
SAND2023-06591O Through National Alliance for Water Innovation funding, Sandia will be contributing to the Water treatment Technoeconomic Assessment Platform (WaterTAP) project. WaterTAP is an open-source, Python-based software package that supports the technoeconomic assessment of full water treatment trains. WaterTAP includes a modular water treatment model library spanning a broad set of water treatment processes composed of unit, property, and costing models.
Irrigation accounts for 42% of the total freshwater withdrawals in the United States. Climate change, the pressure of a growing population, degrading water quality, and increased competition from other sectors could constrain continuous supply to meet future agricultural water demand. This study presents an evaluation framework to assess the potential reuse of agricultural drainage water for crop irrigation. Using a regional approach, we review the current state of agricultural drainage treatment and reuse and the institutional, economic, and other barriers that can influence the reuse decision. In the 31 eastern states, agricultural drainage contains valuable nutrients that can be reused for irrigation with minimal treatment, while the 17 western states struggle with large volumes of saline drainage that can contain constituents of concern (e.g., selenium), preventing reuse without treatment. Using a new decision-support tool called WaterTAP3, a potential treatment train for saline agricultural drainage was analyzed to identify treatment challenges, research needs, and the potential implementation at a larger scale. As demonstrated by our case study, desalination of agricultural drainage is costly and energy intensive and will require sizable investments to fully develop and optimize technologies as well as manage the generated waste and brine.
In this study, we aimed to evaluate BNR and investigate microbial community changes when the DO is reduced in the aerated portions of wastewater treatment trains. We present a dataset of metagenomes obtained from activated sludge collected from the Hamptons Road Sanitary District treatment plant at the beginning of operation, when the DO was high, and at the end of operation, when the DO was low
The Water treatment Technoeconomic Assessment Platform (WaterTAP) is an open-source Python-based software package that supports the simulation and optimization of process-scale water treatment trains. WaterTAP seeks to provide the broader water research community with an integrated modeling capability to evaluate cost, energy, and environmental tradeoffs across water treatment options and identify high impact opportunities for innovation including novel materials, processes, and systems. An updated version of WaterTAP is released quarterly and each includes documentation and release notes.
The Water treatment Technoeconomic Assessment Platform (WaterTAP) is an open-source Python-based software package that supports the simulation and optimization of process-scale water treatment trains. WaterTAP seeks to provide the broader water research community with an integrated modeling capability to evaluate cost, energy, and environmental tradeoffs across water treatment options and identify high impact opportunities for innovation including novel materials, processes, and systems. An updated version of WaterTAP is released quarterly and each includes documentation and release notes.
The Water treatment Technoeconomic Assessment Platform (WaterTAP) is an open-source Python-based software package that supports the simulation and optimization of process-scale water treatment trains. WaterTAP seeks to provide the broader water research community with an integrated modeling capability to evaluate cost, energy, and environmental tradeoffs across water treatment options and identify high impact opportunities for innovation including novel materials, processes, and systems. An updated version of WaterTAP is released quarterly and each includes documentation and release notes.
The Water treatment Technoeconomic Assessment Platform (WaterTAP) is an open-source Python-based software package that supports the simulation and optimization of process-scale water treatment trains. WaterTAP seeks to provide the broader water research community with an integrated modeling capability to evaluate cost, energy, and environmental tradeoffs across water treatment options and identify high impact opportunities for innovation including novel materials, processes, and systems. An updated version of WaterTAP is released quarterly and each includes documentation and release notes.