# Engineering firm ventures into wastewater, LNG

December 2, 2014 1:00 AM

(http://www.post-gazette.com/image/2014/11/28/venture1-png.png)

Fairmont Brine's processing plant in Fairmont, W. Va., where the charge to take in a barrel of wastewater is, on average, $6. ADVERTISEMENT 

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## By Anya Litvak / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Brian Kalt’s big idea is to wedge a wastewater treatment plant in between the locations where shale producers drill in Pennsylvania and where they must truck their prod uced water hundreds of miles west to pump it into deep disposal wells in Ohio. He envisions billboards saying so mething like, “If you were treatin g your water instead of forever taking it out of circulation, you’d already be at your destination.” It will be the second wastewater treatment plant for Mr. Kalt, general manager at Fairmont Brine Processing, a company spun out of an opportunity that presented itself to North Shore-based Venture Engineering last year. The firm has secured a 600-acre site in Wheeling, W.Va., for the new fa cility, which will be able to break down produced water from oil and gas wells into distilled water, salt, and other byproducts through a patented evaporation and crystallization process. That’s what its current plant in Fairmont, W.Va., has been doing for the past year, albeit on a smaller scale than what is en visioned for Wheeling. “The facility in the panhandle is special because you have to drive past it to go [to a] deep injection well,” Mr. Kalt said. Not taking the exit means maki ng a conscious choice do so something less environmentally responsible, he said. While many companies can and do recycle their flowback water onsite, eventually the number of wells being drilled will decline while th e water produced from existing wells will continue to increase. The volume of produced water — that is, wastewat er that comes out of th e well after the initial flowback period once the well is put into production — is expected to rise to almost 44 million barrels in 2018, according to Stephen Hughes, design engineering manager at Tetra Tech. Of that, about 7 million barrels will not be re cycled, twice as much as wasn’t recycled last year. Hundreds of disposal wells and wastewater treatment facilities near the sweet spots of the shale plays will be needed to address this influx, he predicted. Mr. Kalt sees regulations eventually catching up wi th that trend, perhaps limiting the amount of fresh water that can be used in fracking or, more likely, impeding the ramp up in injection wells that would be needed to handle the growing produced water wave. Economics will play a large part as well, he said, as injection well owners hike up prices and transportation costs escalate. Fairmont charges on average about $6 to take in a ba rrel of wastewater. To its clients, it offers two types of water: distilled, which is free of bacteria and metals, and pretreated, which is filtered to strip out some solids. “I would definitely want to use dist illed water at the frack site,” Mr. Kalt said. “It has no bacteria, does not scale, and in addition we’re softening the water.” ADVERTISEMENT 

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...That cuts down on the need for biocides, scale inhibi tors and friction reducers — chemicals used in fracking fluids. But to date, Mr. Ka lt isn’t aware of any of his clients who have actually tried to frack with distilled water and no chemicals. Companies aren’t even as interested in the distilled wa ter as in the dirtier stuff, Mr. Kalt said, in large part because they can haul the le ss-treated water back on the same tr ucks as they use to drop off the wastewater. But with some movement in the WestVirginia legislature to restrict freshwater use in fracking, he expects “by next year, our distilled water becomes a little bit more sought after.” Right now, Fairmont doesn’t charge for the water it produces through its evaporation and crystallization process. “The real reason is we’re getting our name out there,” Mr. Kalt said. Aside from water, Fairmont also produces salt, which it sells mostly to neighboring townships at a flat price of $45 per ton, and calcium chloride, a liquid heavier than water that is often used as a drilling fluid and to control pressure during fracking. The plant has eight customers and processes about 5,000 barrels of wastewater a day. “In some aspects, I kind of saw it as a commercial pilot plant,” said Dave Moniot, president and CEO of Venture Engineering and owner of Fairmont Brine. Mr. Moniot, along with a group of private investors, bought the plant last year from AOP Clearwater, which opened it in 2008 but couldn’t make it work. Venture, which was brought in to evaluate the facility before it closed, recommended $10 million worth of upgrades to its infrastructure. When AOP walked away from the project, Mr. Moniot decided to give it a try and pulled the money together to take his own advice. Venture Engineering is itself a relatively young firm, formed in 2008 when three former S/D Engineers employees decided to break out on their own a fter S/D was acquired by Siemens Power Corp. in 2007. The company has concentrated on the energy industry, serving landfill energy clients as well as oil and gas producers. Fairmont Brine has some of the same owners and investors as Venture, but not all, Mr. Moniot said. The same is true for the wastewater plant planned for Wheeling and for TriState LNG, a new venture that’s a 50-50 partnership with Seattle-based Plum Energy, which builds and operates small-scale LNG plants and delivers their product to customers. TriState plans to build an 80,000 gallon-a-day pl ant in Appalachia, likely on the same site as the Wheeling wastewater plant or maybe next to the current plant. Its model is to work through a mark eting company that will then sell the fuel to oil and gas producers looking to substitute or supplement their use of diesel. Mr. Moniot said he expects the LNG plant to be operational by Dec. 2015, but the company will start buying LNG elsewhere and supplying to customers as ea rly as the first quarter of next year in order to secure the customer base by the time its own production rolls around. “We call it feeding the market,” said Kirt Montague, Plum’s president and CEO. “A lot of these customers are anxious to start using LNG now.” ADVERTISEMENT 

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### 1 Comment

RSS (http://comments.us1.gigya.com/comments/rss/628560 1/pg_powersource/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.post-gazette.com% 2Fpowersource%2Fcompanies-powersource%2F2014%2F12%2F 02%2FEngineering-firm-ventures-into-wastewater-LNG% 2Fstories%2F201412020008%2F) | Subscribe
mkhunt mkhunt 83 days ago

0 In fact, Mr. Montague estimates there is several hundred thousand gallons of LNG demand already in the region. Over the past few years, several companies have announced moves to convert their drilling rigs and frack trucks to be able to run on natural gas and large industrial manufacturers of such equipment are starting to offer new designs amenable to LNG. The LNG plant recently secured an off-take agreement for its fuel, Mr. Kalt said, but the yet-to-be constructed wastewater treatment plant is still waiting for commitments from clients to begin construction. While Mr. Kalt has a “built it and they will come” mentality, Mr. Moniot is waiting for signatures. Nevertheless, both are expected to start operations late next year. Their combined capital cost is projected to be around $100 million. Anya Litvak: alitvak@post-gazette.com (mailto:alitvak@post-gazette.com) or 412-263-1455. Get unlimited digital access - web, mobile , tablet, apps and more. (https://my.postgazette.com/purchase) 

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Sadly, variety of contaminants makes purifying the water an extremely complex undertaking. Anyone who has smelled the volatile odors will understand. At this time the testing of air and water in West Virginia is in a state of scandal...falsification of samples and testi ng has been proven in court. The only environmental decision anyone could make would be to ban frack drilling, period. () Login

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