Nuverra Environmental Solutions has been awarded a $744,000 scientific research grant by the North Dakota Industrial Commission Oil and Gas Research Council to demonstrate the beneficial use of recycled oil well drill cuttings through Nuverra’s Terrafficient process.
The company says its three demonstration projects will show the Terrafficient process makes it possible to turn drilling waste into reusable products.
In addition to reducing drilling waste, the process will also help reduce the environmental footprint of oil and gas development and reduce material and transportation costs, says Nuverra CEO Mark Johnsrud.
Terrafficient is an integrated process that removes and recovers water and residual hydrocarbons and significantly reduces naturally occurring salt content in the drill cuttings. The resulting material has a variety of potential reuse applications, including gravel road resurfacing, general fill for use in road base, and municipal landfill daily cover.
The performance of the Terrafficient product will be evaluated using a combination of laboratory characterization and bench-scale studies, followed by field-scale demonstration tests to include:
Nuverra is also working with Halliburton to utilize the Halliburton’s H20 Forward service for water re-use and recycling in fracking operations, which allows customers to recycle waste streams of produced water for use in well completions.
