LTR - Ep 51 - Current Event: "The New Chlorides Remediation Paradigm"

In this 51st episode, I discuss a Current Event:  "The New Chlorides Remediation Paradigm!"

Chlorides are a big problem, particularly in The Oilfield.  Also known as Production Water, Produced Water, Brine Water and Salt Water, during the extraction of Crude Oil, this high salinity water is also extracted and most often is volumes 2-5 times the amount of Crude Oil.

As such, it must be dealt with and most of the time it is re-injected back into a Saltwater Disposal Well (SDW).  Some times there is one on site, but most often there is not and it must got through a logistics process to get to one by trucking and/or railcar.  This may or may not also require temporary storage in tanks.  All of this creates the possibility for spills or releases.  When this happens, the Chlorides need to be remediated.

OMG Solutions' ELMN8(+) products remediate Chlorides upon contact.  Hanby Environmental's Chlorides Field Test Kit provides the reliable and immediate feedback needed to monitor the remediation of those Chlorides.

Together, these solutions are "The New Chlorides Remediation Paradigm," "Creating a Paradigm Shift" in how Chlorides remediation is performed!

"Thank You" for tuning in and to Our Ongoing Sponsor Hanby Environmental for the continued support of our podcast having a positive impact on The Environmental Remediation Industry!

Send in any future podcast topics or questions to CFator@LetsTalkRemediation.com and follow us on FaceBook, Linked in and X.

If you are not following this podcast and are in the Remediation Space, "You SHOULD Be!"

Also, if you are in The Remediation Industry and are interested in telling your story, we are looking for Experts to interview for future podcast episodes.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Hey there, let's talk remediation. This is your host, Charles Fader, and this is our 51st episode. Our 51st episode is brought to us by our ongoing sponsor, Hambi Environmental. Hambi Environmental is a manufacturer of field test kits, uh, field test kits for petroleum hydrocarbons in soil and water and on solid surfaces, as well as uh PFAS and PFOS uh analysis, as well as chloride analysis. Uh Hambi Environmental field test kits provide uh soil and solid surface analysis uh in four minutes uh at$35 a test and within 10% of a lab result, and in water uh in six minutes at$45 a test and also within 10% of a lab result. Uh the the field test kit for uh PFAS and PFAS provides results in 10 minutes at$250 a sample. And the newly released chlorides field test kit uh tests for uh both in soil and solid surface and water analysis at$25 or$20 a test and provides the results instantly uh in uh three to five minutes, depending on whether it's a uh soil and solid surface or a water analysis test. So thank you, Hambi Environmental, for your ongoing support of this podcast. Let's talk remediation, where we are trying to have a positive impact on the environmental remediation industry. And with that, we will begin our 51st episode. Our 51st episode is going to be on a current event. The current event is the new remediation paradigm for chlorides. And we have had the new hydrocarbon remediation uh paradigm for petroleum hydrocarbons uh for the a little over 10 years now, and that is using the powerful combination of uh the handby field test kits to monitor the real-time and in-situ, meaning in place treatment of petroleum uh hydrocarbons by OMG solutions products called uh Eliminate and Eliminate Plus, where upon contact they remediate petroleum hydrocarbons. And so uh a spinoff from the new hydrocarbon remediation paradigm is the new remediation paradigm for chlorides. And similarly to uh the other uh hydrocarbon remediation paradigm, um, the chlorides uses the Hanby field test kits for chlorides, which is a newly developed field test kit, and uses the same solution, uh OMG solutions eliminate uh product line, eliminate for soil and eliminate plus for water to remediate chlorides. Okay, so that is the current event. The current event is actually going to be a field uh test uh uh a validation test for a spill, but we're going to lead up with that going back about a month from now and how we got there. A month from now, we had a petroleum uh oil-filled company uh reach out to us and say, Hey, do you guys have solutions for chlorides? We've had a uh chloride um release uh from a storage tank, and it is like snow out here. We've got chlorides everywhere. Uh chlorides come from production water, also known as produced water, also known as brine water. Um, if you don't know uh production water or or produced water or brine water, what that is is is water that is high in salinity or chlorides that is produced when they uh pull crude oil from the ground. When when they're uh bringing crude oil out of the ground, typically uh you get about one barrel of crude oil to somewhere between two and five barrels of production water or produced water or brine water, which is water that comes up with the oil that is high in sodium chloride or chlorides or salt, uh so high salinity. And they separate that and then they need to do something with it. It's a byproduct of producing the crude oil out of the ground. Uh, most of the time, what they do is they re-inject it into the ground and called salt water disposal wells, which historically saltwater disposal wells have been deep water wells. Uh, but uh uh in recent uh history they have actually started to do it in shallow salt water disposal wells, and unfortunately, the shallow uh saltwater disposal wells have uh contributed to earthquakes as well as contamination of groundwater. So I think those are going to be phased out and focused on just uh the deep salt water disposal wells because something has to be done with it, right? It's a byproduct of producing crude oil. Now, what the the oil field company reached out to us and said, you know, we'd like to send you guys uh some samples and see if you guys uh have solutions for this. And so they sent us some soil samples from the spilled area that looked like it's snow, which was uh chlorides that had dried out on the soil there. Um, and we did some initial testing on um on those samples they sent us. And so we had two different samples and we called them sample A and sample B. And what we did was uh we did our typical tabletop bench top test on them, where we tested them by taking a pretreatment sample and a post-treatment sample. So, pre-treatment we just jarred up the samples they gave us so we would know what the starting concentration was, and then we treated those two samples with uh a little bit of uh the eliminate uh uh for soil, and we then jarred up those samples and sent them off to a lab. Uh Pace Analytical is who we use, and uh, we sent those to the lab because we wanted to know do we have a solution that can be used to remediate chlorides in chloride spills and chloride releases? And we weren't too concerned with making sure that we had enough treatment and that type of thing because we just really wanted to know did we have an effect on the chlorides level? Well, that was about a month ago, and we got the results back from PACE Analytical that showed that what we called sample A untreated chlorides. So the untreated sample in sample A had 38,800 ppm chlorides in it. And the sample A treated chlorides or post-treatment by the eliminate solution was reduced to 24,600. So what that told us was there was a reduction of 14,200, which is 37% reduction. So in sample A, untreated to treated, we saw a 37% reduction by a little bit of a treatment uh by the eliminate solution. So then uh sample B came back with untreated chlorides of 36,100 and sample B treated chlorides of 26,800, which represented a reduction of 9,300, being a 2626% reduction in chlorides. So with those two samples, we had validation from the third-party lab PACE analytical that we needed to know that yes, indeed, we did have a solution. The eliminate solution is an effective means for remediating chlorides. Okay, in those two samples again, we saw a 37% reduction in sample A and a 36% reduction in sample B. So at that point, we knew that we could effectively remediate chlorides with the eliminate solution. So at Hanby, we decided that we needed to develop a chlorides field test kit to use to complement this solution so that while in the field, you could monitor your work of remediating chlorides because the uh the people out in the field were typically using some type of pH meter or pH strip or some kind of chloride strip, you know, typically used for pulls and stuff like that. But everything out there is found to have a huge inaccuracy level to it. So we decided that it would be beneficial to have something that you could actually rely upon as being accurate. So we developed our chloride field test kit. Okay. Now, like I said, those results show where we saw a 37% reduction and a 26% reduction were really just the uh scratch the surface test to see if we had a solution that uh in the then in the eliminate solution that would remediate uh chlorides. And we got that validation. So then what we did is we had the oil, another oil field uh um company send us some produced water, you know, a real-world sample from the field of production water, or brine water, or produced water. And so they sent us a 275-gallon tote of this produced water. And what we did was we decided to um spill that in a uh a marked-off area, um, and we flagged off that area so that we could, you know, field test this. So we knew we had good um production water real-world sample from the field, and we created a spill with it in a in a you know, like I said, a marked-off area. And immediately this this area that had green grass, literally overnight the next morning, the green grass was dead and brown, no more green. So that are just validated to us that uh we had real-world production water with high salinity, high chlorides in it. So what we did was we went to in our field tests, we went to those that area and we flagged it off in five uh sections. Uh the the top corners, the bottom corners, and the dead center were our our five locations we were going to test and treat. And so what we did was we used our our new handby chlorides field test kit to test each of those five locations. And what we determined was at each of those five locations, we were high in chlorides. Um the the chloride threshold of interest is you need to be below 3,000 ppm chlorides. Uh, in that's the threshold of interest in the oil and gas industry for chloride levels. So, of course, in our calibration photo for chlorides that we developed for our chloride field test kit, we made that the center calibration to make it very simple to see if you're above or below uh that level. And so at each of those five locations, we field tested with the Hambi field test kit for chlorides, and you know, there's a couple different validation points when you're using the field test kit. The amount of color development solution that you use in order to develop the color, um, the amount directly indicates the amount of salinity or chlorides in your sample. The more solution you have to use, the higher the chloride concentration. Also, when you're adding the solution, the color development solution from the field test kit, not only the amount indicates uh the amount of chlorides, you will see the chlorides start to drop out as you add that solution to the sample. And so the the when you add that color development solution, you you initially see your sample turn yellow, and you'll start to see the precipitant, which is the uh chlorides, dropping out of the solution to the bottom of the test tube, and that yellow liquid uh drops it, you know, drops out the chlorides, and the chlorides dropping out to the bottom are white. Okay? And as you add more and more of our color development solution, ultimately in the end, you will change the liquid color from yellow to red. And when you change that to red, that means the reaction is complete. There's no more chlorides in solution, they've all dropped out to the bottom of the test tube. At the same time as the solution turns red, which ultimately clears up to clear, the chlorides discolor. They no longer are white, they actually turn red or brown. Okay, so there's lots of validation points with our test kit. It's how much discolored chloride do you have at the bottom? How much solution did it take to get there? And uh you you know you're not there yet when the solution is still yellow and the chlorides are dropping out and they're still white. So the amount of solution that you use in order to do the reaction, what we've found is the threshold is about one uh one milliliter. When you have one milliliter or more of solution necessary to make the reaction, then you are over the 3,000 threshold. If you use less than one milliliter, then you're under the 3,000 threshold. Also, you will be able to see the amount of chlorides that have dropped out. You'll know, again, just like I said, the amount of solution necessary, and then you'll see the color uh that develops as well. The lighter the discolored chloride is at the bottom, which would be uh more of it, uh, the lighter is the higher concentration. It gets darker, and you have less of it when you have low concentration. And again, the validation points are how much solution did it take to get there, and the the color changed from yellow to red. So here we are. We're out in the field, and we field test tested all five of our locations, and all of them took about a one and a half milliliters of the color development solution necessary in order for the chlorides to drop out and uh change discolor from white to discolored uh reddish brown, and uh for the solution to change from yellow to clear after turning red first. So uh in all five cases, we were able to determine that they were all over the 3,000 threshold because they took more than the one milliliter of solution, as well as they were all uh significantly higher than the 3,000 uh threshold. And what we determined was they were all about the same. They're uh three had slightly higher than the other uh two. So, but in average they were all about the same, which was about 8,650 ppm uh chlorides in uh in the samples. Okay. So then at each of those five locations, since we knew that we were significantly higher in chlorides than the threshold of 3,000, it was time to treat those five locations. So we went ahead and treated those five locations with eliminate. And immediately after treating those five locations with eliminate, we used our field test uh test kit again to test those same five locations for post-treatment uh chloride testing. And at that point, literally putting two drops, not the one and a half milliliters like pre-treatment, but post-treatment took two drops of our color development solution uh to change the color from yellow to red and to not see hardly any precipitant dropping out discolored uh chlorides at the bottom of the test tubes. So at that point we had instant validation that the remediation of the chlorides by the eliminate solution worked because uh the color chains instantly and the amount of solution, and we could visually see the discolored chloride at the bottom. So we had instant validation that the remediation by eliminate worked. So then what we did is at the highest uh location, which we had determined as uh sample location number four, uh we went ahead and because it had a uh the in order to quantify the chlorides in the pretreatment, it took a little bit more solution than the others. Well what we did was we decided to um uh dig down three inches there and uh and take another sample. And at that point we determined that uh um the chloride level again was below the 3,000 threshold. So at that point we we knew that we were we were good there too. So what we did was we had jarred up the uh five location samples for pre-treatment, then after treating with the eliminate, we now at those same five locations have uh tested with the field test kit, we jarred up five post-treatment samples there. And then in each of those same five locations, we dug down three more inches and took uh uh post-treatment samples and jarred those up as well. And sent we sent those 15 samples off to pace analytical for third-party validation. And the results that we got back confirmed or validated what we saw in the field with the Hambi field test kit for chlorides. What we got was a 90% reduction across the board in chlorides. 90%. Now, let's dive into these numbers, these results that we got back from PACE Analytical. In the pretreatment samples, in pretreatment number one, it had seven thousand three hundred and ninety ppm. In pretreatment number two, that location had si uh eight thousand six hundred and seventy ppm. In sample uh location number three, it had six thousand hundred and uh ppm. In sample location pretreatment number four, it was the highest concentration, it had 10,500 ppm. And in uh sample location pretreatment number five, it had eight thousand nine hundred and sixty ppm. Okay? So we know at all five locations we are high in chlorides, significantly higher than the threshold of 3,000 ppm to the tune of two to three times. Okay? Now, if you were to average out those pretreatment five locations, the average between them is 8,444 ppm. Okay? Now let's go into the post-treatment results after immediately after uh remediating with eliminate. Post-treatment number one only had 114 ppm, down from 7,390 to 114. That is a 98% reduction in the chlorides. In sample location number two, post-treatment had 699 ppm. That's down from 8,670 ppm to 699. That represents a 92% reduction. Sample location number three had 348 ppm. That's down from 6,700 ppm down to 348 ppm, representing a 95% reduction. Sample location number four had 2,520 ppm. That's down from the highest concentration location of sample number four. It started at 10,500 ppm down to 2,520 ppm, which represents a 76% reduction. Then sample location number 5 had 1,460 ppm down from 8,960 ppm, which represents an 84% reduction. Averaging these five locations post-treatment at surface, the average is 1,028 ppm. 1,028 ppm down from 8,444 ppm represents an 88% reduction in the chloride levels across the board. Okay. Now, let's go down three inches. Post treatment three inches in those same locations. Post treatment number one had sixteen hundred ppm. Again, that's down from seven thousand three hundred and ninety ppm, which is an eighty eight. Post-treatment number two at three inches had 1460 ppm. Again, that's down from 8,670 ppm, and that represents an 83% reduction. Post-treatment number three at three inches had 243 ppm. 243 ppm down from 6,700 ppm, which represents a 96% reduction. And post treatment number 4 at 3 inches had 950 ppm. That's down from the highest concentration of 10,500 ppm. 10,500 ppm down to 950 ppm represents a 91% reduction. And sample number five location at 3 inches had 305 ppm. Again, that's down from 8,960 ppm, which represents a 97% reduction. Again, averaging these five sample locations for 3 inches deep, the average was 911 ppm, and that's down from the average of the five pretreatment samples at 8,444 ppm. And this this 911 ppm represents an 89% reduction. So again, whether you're looking at them individually or you're looking at them on an average, average represented at surface from 8,444 ppm to at surface 1,028 ppm, which was an 88% reduction, or um 3 inches deep, the average being 911 ppm, which represented an 89% reduction. So 88% reduction at surface, 89% uh reduction at 3 inches. Those are the average numbers. Then what I decided to do was I remove the highest and lowest from each of these groups, um pre-treatment and post-treatment and post-treatment at three inches, remove the highest and lowest numbers there, and I determined that the average reductions were still 90% and 92%. So whether you're looking at um them as a whole or removing the outliers, the high and low, no matter how you slice it, it's a 90% reduction in the chlorides. Okay. And most important here is that looking back at all of the results, which are the 15 uh lab analytic results, five pretreatment, five post-treatment at surface, and five post-treatment at three inches. Knowing that the threshold of interest is 3,000 ppm, what we know is all pretreatment samples exceeded that threshold of 3,000 by 2 to 3 times. Again, pretreatment number one was 7,390. Pre-treatment number two was 8,670. Pre-treatment number three was 6,700. Pre-treatment number four was 10,500, being the highest concentration of chlorides. Pre-treatment number five was 8,960. All these numbers are two to three times the threshold of interest of 3,000 ppm. 3,000 ppm, 3,000 times 2 is is 2 times would be 6,000. 3,000 ppm times 3 times would be 9,000. So all of our samples fall between 6 and 9,000 ppm, which is 2 and 3 times the threshold of 3,000 ppm. You need to get below 3,000 ppm. Okay? So all five of our locations, and again the average, remember that average was 8,444 ppm. So it falls right in there at two to three times the threshold of interest of 3,000 ppm. And post-treatment, all samples are below 3,000 ppm. All 10 samples, that's the five at the surface and the five at the three inches below. All ten post-treatment samples are below 3,000 ppm threshold. And 90% are nowhere near the threshold. They're only 50% of the way, okay? Or less. I say 90% because one of the 10 samples, it's the one at sample location number four, where we started with the highest concentration of chlorides of 10,500, the post-treatment at surface was 2,520, which is you know 500 below the threshold of interest of 3,000. So that's one of the 10 samples. Now three inches below, it was only at 950 ppm, which is uh again, not even nowhere nowhere near the threshold. So uh 90% were nowhere even near the threshold, and only one or ten percent was somewhere in the ballpark of the threshold. Um, and then be besides that one of 2,520, there are two others that are at 1460 and one at 1600. So three of the remaining nine are only 50% of the threshold of interest. Everything else is significantly lower. Um, so that what that indicates is no matter how you look at it or how you slice it, a 90% reduction in chlorides with all of the results significantly below the threshold of interest, where they started two to three times the threshold of interest, is complete validation that the eliminate solution is very effective in remediating uh the chlorides. And it validated that the field testing told us exactly what we needed to know. And so these lab analytics by Pace Analytical, which is which is one of the uh premier laboratories in the in the uh United States, validated our field test with the field results from the Hambi uh, you know, the new remediation paradigm, right? The Hambi field test kit providing real-time feedback uh to monitor the real-time treatment of the chlorides. It literally um the Hambi kit was used immediately after the treatment. So, upon contact, treatment with the eliminate solution immediately remediated the chlorides, and immediately the Hambi field test kit told you that. Um, you could see that in the field, and so that's when we knew it was time to jar up all the samples and send them off to the lab, and the lab just confirmed what we knew. So the the laboratory analysis confirmed that we have developed the sister to what we've had for the over the last 10 years of the new hydrocarbon remediation paradigm. We have now created the new remediation paradigm for chlorides, so which is the combination of the immediate real-time and accurate feedback from the Hambi field test kit for chlorides, validating the real-time in-situ upon contact remediation of chlorides by using OMG solutions product eliminate for uh the chlorides uh remediation. So, with that, uh that is the current event. The current event is the 90% reduction in chlorides of the field test for uh remediating chlorides in the field, and this is all hot off the press. We literally just did this in the last two weeks, and so this is the new solution because uh chlorides are a big problem in in oil production because it's such a vast amount of this production water or produced water or brine water or salt water that or chloride water, whatever you want to call it, um there's such a mass volume of it produced in the production of crude oil that something has to be done with it. Whether it's reinjected into uh salt water disposal wells or logistically it has to be trucked off or trucked off and then put in rail cars. Um it it has to be dealt with, and for that reason, it creates opportunities for uh spills. Okay. And prior to it being trucked off or railed off, sometimes temporarily it's held in in uh storage tanks. And in through all this process, storage tanks can deteriorate and leak. Um, trucks can get turned over uh in the logistics process, rail cars can get wrecked and turned over. Um, so uh oftentimes there are chloride spills that have to be dealt with, and we have the solution for that. And then in addition to that, at some point in time, there has to be some consideration for something else besides constantly always reinjecting um this uh high salinity production water, uh bringing water produced water back into salt water disposal wells. Um, and we have the solutions to help in this arena. So that's it for this episode, this 51st episode. Uh thank you, Hambi Environmental, for your ongoing support of this podcast, Let's Talk Remediation, where we're trying to have a positive uh impact on the environmental remediation industry. Thank you for uh having interest in tuning into this podcast. Uh as I always say, if you have a future topic you'd like for us to address uh on an episode, or if you have a specific question you'd like for us to to uh attack, just drop me uh an email at C Fader, that's C Effes and Frank A-T-O-R, C Fader at let's talkremediation.com, and we will get that uh episode covered for you. And with that, I am your host, Charles Fader, and I'm out of five.