Environmental and Economic Water Management in Shale Gas Extraction

José A. Caballero, Juan A. Labarta, Natalia Quirante, Alba Carrero-Parreño and Ignacio E. Grossmann
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José A. Caballero: Institute of Chemical Process Engineering, University of Alicante, PO 99, E-03080 Alicante, Spain
Juan A. Labarta: Institute of Chemical Process Engineering, University of Alicante, PO 99, E-03080 Alicante, Spain
Natalia Quirante: Institute of Chemical Process Engineering, University of Alicante, PO 99, E-03080 Alicante, Spain
Alba Carrero-Parreño: Institute of Chemical Process Engineering, University of Alicante, PO 99, E-03080 Alicante, Spain
Ignacio E. Grossmann: Department of Chemical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 4, 1-20

Abstract: This paper introduces a comprehensive study of the Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) of water management in shale gas exploitation. First, we present a comprehensive study of wastewater treatment in the shale gas extraction, including the most common technologies for the pretreatment and three different desalination technologies of recent interest: Single and Multiple-Effect Evaporation with Mechanical Vapor Recompression and Membrane Distillation. The analysis has been carried out through a generic Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and the ReCiPe metric (at midpoint and endpoint levels), considering a wide range of environmental impacts. The results show that among these technologies Multiple-Effect Evaporation with Mechanical Vapor Recompression (MEE-MVR) is the most suitable technology for the wastewater treatment in shale gas extraction, taking into account its reduced environmental impact, the high water recovery compared to other alternatives as well as the lower cost of this technology. We also use a comprehensive water management model that includes previous results that takes the form of a new Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) bi-criterion optimization model to address the profit maximization and the minimization Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA), based on its results we discuss the main tradeoffs between optimal operation from the economic and environmental points of view.

Keywords: life cycle assessment (LCA); shale gas; wastewater treatment; thermal-based technology; membrane distillation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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