Proprietary Method Cleans-Up Waste Water From Oil/Gas Drilling Operations

The problems associated with the waste water generated by drilling operations have become notorious in recent years.  Not atypically, from 40,000 to 3 Million gallons of water laced with toxic ‘fracturing’ chemicals can be pumped into a single well and then sucked back out in the natural gas extraction process.  One of the biggest problems has become how to manage or dispose of this contaminated water.

Waste water from gas drilling operations contains a vast mix of salts, earth material (dirt), heavy metals, hydrocarbons (methane, benzene), petro-chemicals and other known health hazards and carcinogens.  Consequently, the means of disposing of this contaminated water is one of the most vital issues that local governments, citizens and the drilling companies must scrutinize to ensure community well-being.

“Typically, it has been the practice to either inject this waste water into non-producing wells or collect it in evaporation ponds,” Reed explained, noting that environmental concerns over the accumulation of pollutants are calling these standard practices into serious question. ”Some companies are attempting to clean the water by filters or by adding more chemicals.  But none of these methods actually ‘clean’ the waste from the water,” Reed elaborated.  ”There have been some efforts to recycle, but these have proven cost prohibitive.  Thereby the use of injection wells or waste holding ponds to dispose of the waste generated is still the norm. ”Due to the nature of these standard methods, very little if any recovery of resources has actually been done,” Reed continued. “Using mechanical devices, temperature controls and particulate settling rates we have designed a system which gathers, separates, and recycles the vast majority of the water waste from a drilling operation.  The system components that we have designed to work together do NOT use chemicals, charcoal or filters that have to be disposed of, or add carbons to the waste stream,” Reed assured.

Promising to return up to 95% of the water normally contaminated in drilling operations to a quality of  0.08 ppm (parts per million) or less of contaminants, Reed says his company’s water reclamation system is energy efficient, cost effective and environmentally sound. ”The solids separated from the waste water can be disposed of in accordance with regulations, or further refined to recover the metals and other materials that have a viable market,” Reed said, emphasizing that the water which is cleaned by ASEI’s proprietary system may be re-utilized in the drilling system or, because the water successfully tests to purity standards for potable quality, utilized as fresh water.

Since the initial news release in the last week of December 2009, ASEI has commenced the process of raising the finances needed to commence building these units on a commercial scale. We are actively involved with Simmons First Bank in Clinton Arkansas with the goal of purchasing the now vacant Culpepper Plastics plant on Hwy 65 in Van Buren County.  We have also been in contact with various persons and agents in the area that may have viable      commercial/industrial property for sale for this purpose.

As ASEI’s process is vastly different than the usual method/s of “cleaning” water, our units are designed to be portable, or stationary as the customer dictates.  The smallest t of these units will recover 100 gallons of water per hour, the largest (at this time) is a 900 gallon per hour unit.  The building/manufacturing/and assembly of these machines require about 21 days from order to delivery.

ASEI,s initial work force is expected to be 35-50 persons, depending on pre-orders.  If we can expand to building 3 units a month a work force of approximately 150 persons or greater will be needed to fill those orders.    With the upcoming scheduled drilling just in Arkansas we expect to at least double our output to 6 units a month in the first 18 months of the facility being opened.  Currently we have identified the market for our machines in a additional nine (9) other states.

While it is ASEI’s goal to build/buy the facility and employ our citizens in our home county, as a business we are not refusing to look at other options as they become available. For more information on ASEI’s waste water clean-up technology, contact Robert Reed  501-745-6341 , wastewater@aseiar.com or visit the company site at  www.aseiar.com