Chemical Engineering November 2012 - 14

CHEMENTATOR
Wastewater
Two technologies combined
to treat oil and gas wastewater
A
partnership between New Sky Energy
(Boulder, Colo.; www.newskyenergy.
com) and 212 Resources (Houston, Tex.;
www.212resources.com) combines the two
companies' technologies to generate freshwater
and usable inorganic chemicals from
produced water in petroleum and naturalgas
drilling operations.
212 Resources has developed a vapor
compression distillation process that concentrates
brine streams with varying levels
of total dissolved solids (TDS) and generates
freshwater, which the company calls " engineered
water, " for re-use in drilling, well
completion and oil and gas production. The
concentrated brine from 212's process, with
up to 300,000 parts-per-million (ppm) TDS,
becomes the input feed for New Sky Energy's
technology, which involves a proprietary
electrochemical reactor and a chemical
precipitator. " The New Sky technology efficiently
converts highly concentrated brine
into useful chemicals, " says company CEO
Deane Little.
Electrochemical
separator
Vapor
compression
distillation
Treated water
Concentrated
brine
Lower cost chemicals
Hydrochloric acid
Sodium hydroxide/
sodium carbonate
Bleach
New Sky's reactor separates the salt solution
into acid, base, hydrogen and oxygen
or chlorine streams (Chem. Eng., June, p.
11). The hydroxide base stream reacts with
waste carbon dioxide to produce sodium carbonate
and bicarbonate, while chlorine is
used to make hydrochloric acid and bleach.
In this application, Little says calcium and
magnesium ions are removed prior to entering
the New Sky reactor, using water softening
agents produced by the process.
New Sky's Little says the two companies
will start a " commercial pilot " plant in
Texas using both technologies in the winter
of 2013. " We envision treating water in
regional hubs to minimize transportation
miles, " he explains.
Catalytic ethane-cracking process
allows lower-temperature operation
ither Chemicals LLC (South Charleston,
W.Va.; www.aitherchemicals.com) is
planning to build a commercial-scale plant
based on a catalytic ethane-cracking process
that uses 80% less energy and generates
60% less carbon dioxide than conventional
steam-cracking of ethane.
The company has refined a mixed metalA
oxide
catalyst that was originally developed
by Union Carbide in the 1980s. The catalyst
contains molybdenum, niobium, calcium, vanadium
and others that are part of Aither's
proprietary technology.
Around the catalyst, Aither has built a
streamlined and highly scalable process
that Aither CEO Leonard Dolhert says can
save money both on the operational side, as
well as the capital expenditure side.
" Because the reaction is exothermic and
runs at a much lower temperature (350°C)
than steam cracking, the energy use is
greatly lowered, " Dolhert says. On the capital
side, the process generates very little
co-product, and the only one it does produce
- acetic acid - is much easier to separate
than the hydrocarbon co-products found in
steam-cracking operations.
The demonstration plant uses commercial-scale
tube reactors for the catalytic
cracking, which makes the scaleup very
straightforward, Dolhert says. " You're not
changing the size of anything - you're just
adding more reactors to get to the commercial-scale
plant, " he explained.
Aither has demonstrated the ethanecracking
process in its West Virginia facility,
and is raising cash for the commercial
plant, which Dolhert anticipates will
be located in the tri-state area of Ohio,
West Virginia and Pennsylvania to take
advantage of wet natural gas from the
Marcellus shale formation. The plant will
be fully operational in three to five years,
he forecasts.
Aither plans to sell the ethylene it produces
directly, as well as manufacture and
sell the ethylene derivatives polyethylene,
ethylene oxide and ethylene glycol.
Another advantage to pursuing a commercial-scale
catalytic ethane-cracking
plant, Dolhert says, is that the facility can
easily fit into underutilized chemical sites
that are too small for conventional ethane
steam-cracking plants.
■
14 CHEMICAL ENGINEERING WWW.CHE.COM NOVEMBER 2012
(Continued from p. 12)
drogenase has been elusive to
researchers, in part because
it doesn't exist naturally, says
Zach Reitman, one of the Duke
scientists working on the project.
Adipic acid is an important
building block chemical that
is used in nylon production,
among other areas.
Graphene coating
Researchers at Monash University
(Melbourne, Australia; www.
monash.edu) and Rice University
(Houston; www.rice.edu) have
used a chemical vapor deposition
technique to apply graphene to
a copper metal surface at high
temperatures. The graphene coating
rendered the copper more
corrosion-resistant to salt water
by a factor of 100, and was more
difficult to damage than polymer
coatings. The research team is
now investigating ways to apply
the graphene coating to metals
other than copper, and also ways
to coat at lower temperatures,
which would simplify production
and enhance market potential.
Making MOFs
Chemists at Queen's University
Belfast (U.K.; www.qub.ac.uk)
have patented a solvent-free
process for making metalorganic
frameworks (MOFs)
porous materials that promise
to greatly reduce the production
time of these important porous
materials. Two inexpensive
precursors are simply ground
together in a basic milling machine,
producing MOFs powder
within a few minutes.
Queen's spin-out arm,
QUBIS, has formed a new
company - MOF Technologies
(www.moftechnologies.com) -
to exploit the technology. ❏
http://www.newskyenergy http://www.212resources.com http://www.monash.edu http://www.rice.edu http://www.aitherchemicals.com http://www.qub.ac.uk http://www.moftechnologies.com http://WWW.CHE.COM
Chemical Engineering November 2012

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