The Problem:
The principal objective of wastewater treatment is generally to allow human and industrial effluents to be disposed of without danger to human health or unacceptable damage to the natural environment. Irrigation with wastewater in both disposal and utilization is indeed an effective form of wastewater disposal (as in slow-rate land treatment). However, some degree of treatment must normally be provided to raw municipal wastewater before it can be used for agricultural or landscape irrigation or for aquaculture. The quality of treated effluent used in agriculture has a great influence on the operation and performance of the wastewater-soil-plant or aquaculture system. In the case of irrigation, the required quality of effluent will depend on the crop or crops to be irrigated, the soil conditions and the system of effluent distribution adopted. Through crop restriction and selection of irrigation systems which minimize health risk, the degree of pre-application wastewater treatment can be reduced. A similar approach is not feasible in aquaculture systems and more reliance will have to be placed on control through wastewater treatment.
The most appropriate wastewater treatment to be applied before effluent use in agriculture is that which will produce an effluent meeting the recommended microbiological and chemical quality guidelines both at low cost and with minimal operational and maintenance requirements (Arar 1988). Adopting as low a level of treatment as possible is especially desirable in developing countries, not only from the point of view of cost but also in acknowledgement of the difficulty of operating complex systems reliably. In many locations it will be better to design the reuse system to accept a low-grade of effluent rather than to rely on advanced treatment processes producing a reclaimed effluent which continuously meets a stringent quality standard.
Nevertheless, there are locations where a higher-grade effluent will be necessary and it is essential that information on the performance of a wide range of wastewater treatment technology should be available. The design of wastewater treatment plants is usually based on the need to reduce organic and suspended solids loads to limit pollution of the environment. Pathogen removal has very rarely been considered an objective but, for reuse of effluents in agriculture, this must now be of primary concern and processes should be selected and designed accordingly (Hillman 1988). Treatment to remove wastewater constituents that may be toxic or harmful to crops, aquatic plants (macrophytes) and fish is technically possible but is not normally economically feasible. Unfortunately, little performance data on wastewater treatment plants in developing countries are available and even then they do not normally include effluent quality parameters of importance in agricultural use.
The short-term variations in wastewater flows observed at municipal wastewater treatment plants follow a diurnal pattern. Flow is typically low during the early morning hours, when water consumption is lowest and when the base flow consists of infiltration-inflow and small quantities of sanitary wastewater. A first peak of flow generally occurs in the late morning, when wastewater from the peak morning water use reaches the treatment plant, and a second peak flow usually occurs in the evening. The relative magnitude of the peaks and the times at which they occur vary from country to country and with the size of the community and the length of the sewers. Small communities with small sewer systems have a much higher ratio of peak flow to average flow than do large communities. Although the magnitude of peaks is attenuated as wastewater passes through a treatment plant, the daily variations in flow from a municipal treatment plant make it impracticable, in most cases, to irrigate with effluent directly from the treatment plant. Some form of flow equalization or short-term storage of treated effluent is necessary to provide a relatively constant supply of reclaimed water for efficient irrigation, although additional benefits result from storage.
The Solution:
The Power to Economically Recycle Water in Your Drilling E&P Program While Substantially Reducing the Carbon Footprint of Your Operation.
One of the largest opportunities for the application of LATITUDE SOLUTIONS, INC’s Electro Precipitation Technology™ is in reclaiming drilling wastewater from gas exploration operations. LATITUDE SOLUTIONS, INC has developed an alternative energy-driven means of filtering gas well reserve pit drilling water, a waste stream that few competing technologies can tackle. LATITUDE SOLUTIONS, INC’s technology reclaims drilling wastewater by using a unique filtration technology and harnessing a chemical energy source required by downstream E&P processes, a cost and resource that is already being consumed on each well.
Application of this technology saves money, dramatically reduces energy consumption, and reclaims or recycles millions of barrels of fresh water that are normally transported long distances, injected in deep disposal wells and forever lost from the fresh water cycle. Fresh water is utilized in all phases of gas well development: drilling, completion, and stimulation. Most of the source water for these activities comes from fresh water wells, surface waters or municipal water supplies. On average, a single well can consume 5,000,000 to 8,000,000 gallons of fresh water that may never see its way back to the fresh water cycle.
LATITUDE SOLUTIONS, INC’s technology for filtering drilling wastewater dramatically reduces the negative environmental impact of E&P operations by not only conserving and recycling precious fresh water, but significantly reducing the overall carbon footprint and danger of E&P water handling.
