The company said that the Bear Creek Green Machine is an energy efficient system for recycling the millions of gallons of fresh water used daily in the oil and gas drilling process. This system incorporates HTI’s proprietary forward osmosis membrane technology into a portable and scalable oil field waste water reclamation system.
The company claimed that the Green Machine provides drilling operators with a cost-effective alternative to reclaim their waste water for reuse and will reduce the environmentally damaging and costly transportation currently used in natural gas exploration.
In its initial market test, HBC Systems made the Green Machine water reclamation system and services available in 2009 to oil and gas exploration and production companies drilling for natural gas in the Haynesville Shale in northern Louisiana and east Texas, primarily for the reclamation of reserve pit water left behind from the drilling process. After the tests last year, the Green Machine mobile units are ready for full-scale implementation nationwide, the company said.
In addition, the mobile units process waste water at rates in excess of 100 gallons per minute. With two machines fully operational and five more under construction, HBC Systems will add and deploy additional units to other markets such as the Marcellus Shale, which stretches from Virginia to New York, and the Barnett Shale in Texas.
The forward osmosis process of the Green Machine is powered using a concentrated salt solution that is typically already located at the well site. The concentrated salt is used by most operators and combined with fresh water in the creation of completion fluid used for the hydraulic fracturing process.
The company said that the Green Machine filters and recycles contaminated reserve pit waste water to create a completion fluid in a single step process without consuming large quantities of energy.
The company further claimed that the Green Machine saves drillers money in water and transportation costs, reclaims 125,000 gallons of reserve pit waste using 20 gallons of diesel fuel in field tests, which traditionally would have required 20 truckloads of transportation emission to distant disposal wells for underground injection.
