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Project No.: 0172.09.038.082 Page 1 of 3

Project Name: Shale Gas CBI?

Yes

No

TELEPHONE CALL RECORD

Incoming

Outgoing

Date: 11/10/10 Time: 10:00 am

pm

Company Name: GE ERG Staff Name: Brent Ruminski

Contact Name: Mark Wilson Contact Phone Number: 215-942-3598

General Subject: GE Power and Water Wastewater Treatment Technologies

TOPICS DISCUSSED AND ACTION TAKEN

On 9/26/11 at 4:30PM, I called Patricia Garofalo. Patricia said that the information we are seeking would 

involve talking to several people from the company. She said she would contact those people and get proposed 

times they would be willing to talk to ERG on the phone. Patricia said she would reply with proposed times 

tomorrow (9/27/11). 

On 10/25/11 at 11 AM, I called Beth Coffman at Masto Public Relations, Inc., who works for GE. I told her 

about the information we are interested in and she said she would contact Renee Twardzik (at GE) and let her 

know to get in touch with me. 

On 11/09/11 at 2 PM, I received a call from Mark Wilson from GE. We briefly discussed what kind of 

information I was looking for. We scheduled to talk tomorrow morning (11/10/11) at 10 AM so that he could 

block out an hour for discussion.

On 11/10/11 at 10 AM, I received a call from Mark Wilson. The conversation lasted over an hour and we 

discussed the following topics:

General Industry Background: We discussed several aspects of the shale gas industry.

1. In the field, smaller companies tend to do the exploration and initial drilling. Then, they are likely to sell 

the well, well pad, lease, or project to larger companies after making some initial profit on production. 

The smaller companies’ profit comes from what the larger companies pay them for the well, well pad, 

lease, etc., while the larger companies make their profit from production. 

2. “Lease holding”: often times the contract between the mineral rights owner and the operator states that a 

certain level of activity (drilling or production) must be occurring within a specific period of time. As a 

result, sometimes a company will drill a well they know will not be productive just to maintain the 

agreement in the contract.

3. Flowback may be considered water that returns within 30 days of fracturing. However, operating 

companies may determine what day the water becomes produced water instead of flowback for 

accounting reasons. However, Mark even said that the day can be rather arbitrary based on his 

experiences with operators.

4. Mark confirmed that no company has the same criteria for the quality of fracturing fluid from flowback 

or produced water. In general, most companies don’t seem to have set criteria at all. 

5. NORM: Mark briefly discussed NORM and how GE has done a considerable amount of research on 

NORM concentrations in wastewater for the natural gas industry. He provided general locations where 
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GE has found concentrations high enough to cause problems (specific concentrations were not 

mentioned): north central and southwest Pennsylvania. Mark suggested the problems have more to do 

with equipment scale and did not mention any impact on human health; however, concentrated solids 

associated with NORM could result in a more expensive disposal scenario. Mark categorized general 

shale gas infrastructure locations where NORM may cause problems:

1. Scaling in well and drilling equipment.

2. Scaling on treatment equipment (especially thermal).

3. Disposal holding tanks at landfill.

Trucking: Mark talked about issues with trucking. He said the approximate upper volumetric limit for trucks is 

5,000 gallons because of the weight. If a well requires 5 million gallons of fracturing fluid, 1,000 truck loads are 

needed to haul the make-up water. A percentage of that water will then need to be trucked after flowback and 

produced water is collected. The presentation Mark provided me with presents a table of estimated number of 

truck loads over the lifetime of one for one well or wellpad.

Technologies Offered by GE and Infrastructure: Mark explained how GE manufactures RO, UF, NF, 

evaporation/crystallization, EDR/ED units. However, most of the conversation involved GEs evaporation and 

crystallization units. Mark described two scenarios of wastewater treatment in the gas industry: above and 

below 35,000 mg/L TDS. Mark pointed out that below this threshold, membrane technologies are options that 

are more viable and above this threshold, thermal technologies are options that are more viable.

Evaporation

Operation: The GE mobile evaporator is a mechanical vapor compression unit. It also evaporates at lower than 

atmospheric pressure to facilitate higher rates of evaporation with reduced energy consumption.

Pretreatment: When I asked about pretreatment requirements, Mark explained that you cannot cookie cut what 

practice should be used in the field. This is because of the variation in water quality from formation to 

formation. He briefly mentioned some of the pretreatment options including filtration, clarification, and 

softening.

Energy: The mobile evaporator is hooked up to the grid for electricity if possible. In remote locations, which 

are typical, the unit uses a wellhead gas generator to produce electricity instead. Mark pointed out that 

Waukesha is a distributor of natural-gas fired engines that is associated with GE. Mark said these engines are 

reliable and good for use in oil and gas applications because they can run on wellhead gas. Mark has specific 

energy consumption data in a presentation that he can send me.

Costs: We did not discuss specific costs of GE evaporation units. However, Mark did give a ball park the cost 

of this technology to be between $2.50 and $5.00 per barrel of treated wastewater. This cost does not include 

pretreatment but does include the disposal of brine. Mark did not specify how or where brine was typically 

disposed of (it varies as you move from state to state due to regulations and available options), but one option 

which he provided more detail about was the use of a crystallizer for concentrating the brine waste stream.

Crystallization

GE has crystallization technologies, which results in zero liquid discharge (Mark estimated 95 to 98% water 

recovery). GE has fixed systems globally, but does not have any mobile crystallization units at this time

deployed for U.S. shale gas application. When a crystallizer is used for the shale gas, industry it is likely the 

unit will be located in a central location for a group of leases/well pads. The brine stream from a mobile 
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evaporator (located on site) or an upstream central evaporator would be trucked to the centrally located 

crystallizer unit, which would treat the brine, resulting in a treated wastewater stream and salt crystals. 

Salt Reuse: GE is currently working with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (Penn DOT), who 

recently approved the quality of salt generated by GE from produced water for road use. Mark offered to set me 

up with a contact with more knowledge on this work. Mark said that potential constituents in the salt, which

may prevent reuse for road salt, include metals, NORM, and toxic chemicals.

Follow up: Mark gave me his email (MarkR.Wilson@ge.com). Following our phone conversation, we 

exchanged emails. Mark provided me with a presentation on the evaporation and crystallization units (see 

attachment). Mark also said he would be a good contact to start with when we want to collect confidential 

information. 

On November 18, 2011, Mark emailed me back with contact information for Joseph Tinto (see email 

attachment). Mark informed me this contact could give ERG more information on NORM and trucking data.