LTR - Ep 56 - Why is it Important to Remediate Chlorides?

In this 56th episode, I discuss Why is it Important to Remediate Chlorides?

Chlorides, Sodium Chlorides (NaCl), Salt.  Brine Water, Produced Water, Production Water is Water with high amounts of Salt in it.  Much higher salt content than that of Ocean Water.

Brine Water is brought up out of the ground when extracting oil from ground.  When "producing" oil, for every barrel of oil obtained, it comes with 2-5 barrels of Brine Water.

This high salinity water must be managed and this involves temporary storage in holding tanks and logistical transport to injection wells where it is returned back into the ground.  And often, there are mishaps, from the corrosion of holding tanks and spills during transport.  When this takes place, the Chlorides have adverse effects on everything living.  It kills vegetation like grass, plants and trees and fresh water aquatic organisms.  It also has adverse changes to fresh water itself.

Also, in cold weather areas, salt and salt water is used to melt ice and snow to make the road way safe, which when those areas warm up, runs off and creates these same issues.  Additionally, salt is corrosive and can cause the damage and weakening of metals, like in infrastructure such as buildings, bridges and vehicles themselves.  And the salt can even damage concrete by causing it to crack.

For these reasons, it is important that Chlorides (Salt) be remediated.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:04

Thanks for joining it to our podcast. We love having you here and it's our mission to bring you all the latest and greatest tips, skills, and know-how to make you the best that you can be. We know that you have an email and we're going to show you how. Now let's get started.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Hey there, let's talk remediation. This is your host, Charles Fader, and this is our 56th episode of Let's Talk Remediation. Uh our 56th episode is brought to us by our ongoing sponsor, Hambi Environmental. Hambi Environmental is a manufacturer of field test kits for petroleum hydrocarbons, for chlorides, and for PFAS and PFOS, providing uh accurate results within 10% of a lab result, economical results at $35 a test for soil and solid surface, and $45 a test for water for petroleum hydrocarbons, and $20 a test for chlorides, and $250 a test for PFAS and PFOS. And providing those results efficiently in four minutes for soil and six minutes for water, and uh about uh three to five minutes, depending on if it's soil or water for your chlorides and ten minutes for your PFAS and PFOS. So uh thank you again, Hambi Environmental, for your ongoing support of this podcast. Let's talk remediation, where we're trying to have a positive impact on the environmental remediation industry. And with that, let's get started with our 56th episode. Our 56th episode is why is it important that chlorides be remediated? Now, chlorides, chloride, uh, chlorides uh it means salt, uh NACL, sodium chloride. It goes it, you know, it's produced by the oil and gas industry uh in the production of oil and gas, but chlorides um gets spilt and there's a need to have them remediated. So if you don't know, in the production of oil and gas, when oil and gas is extracted from the ground, oftentimes for each barrel of oil that gets extracted from the ground, uh up with that chloride water or brine water or production water comes up, and that high salinity water, high salt water, um, meaning high salt content water, you're for every barrel of oil you get out of the ground, you get anywhere between two and five barrels of production water or produced water or brine water, whatever you want to call it, it's all the same. It's salt water. So it's salt water, it's water with high salinity salt, though, high salt content, uh, typically ranging in the 10,000 to 30,000 parts per million range. So high salinity, high concentration, much saltier water than even in the ocean. So for that reason, you know, uh with all that high volume of water that is produced, uh, it there's something that needs to be done with it. So they, you know, separate the oil from the salt water, and then the salt water must be dealt with. And so whether it's temporarily stored, temporarily stored in some kind of storage um uh tank uh before it is transported to uh an injection well where it's injected back into the ground where it came from, uh, whether it's stored temporarily in that tank or immediately uh put into uh 18-wheeler uh to be uh transported over to uh the injection well. Um for that reason, logistics are involved in the moving of this high salinity salt water. During that process, there could be mishaps where that high salinity water or salt water, uh production water, brine water, produced water, all synonymous with high salinity water. Water that has a lot of salt in it, high salt content. During during that process, the mishaps can be done where uh the infrastructure rusts out at the tanks and there ends up on the grand ground right there at the tank battery where the actual uh the separation is taking place between the oil and the in the uh brine water. Or during the logistics process of transporting that uh that brine water over to the injection well, um something could happen along the way where it gets spilled. Okay, so this high salinity salt water gets spilt and it is toxic to the environment in which it spills. In fact, I mean typically if salt water gets spilt on uh a grassy area, you can basically see the the the grass is almost like the next day is brown and dead. All right. So for that reason, chlorides must be remediated. So chlorides do not break down in the environment uh very easily, so they are toxic to our ecosystems where things live, whether it's vegetation, whether it is um organisms, that type of thing. And again, this this water is highly elevated with the chloride levels, much more than even the salt water in the ocean. And for that reason, it must be remediated because it doesn't break down on its own. Um oftentimes uh this happens in oil-producing regions, uh or there's other areas that uh most often aren't thought about as much as the oil-producing regions because that's where it comes out of the ground where this brine water is taken. But also in um in in more cold regions where they actually put salt content out on the roadways for uh you know, making the snow melt so that the roadways are safe. Well, that that runs off as well. Uh and so for that reason, uh there's many areas that have the chlorides or the salt water uh concern. And why is it such a concern? Well, it it makes you know, when it runs off, it it changes fresh water into you know salt water, and so that causes issues. Um and you know, in in areas like I said where there's uh high uh volumes of snow, for example, or ice, and they put the salt water on the ground, well, that salt ends up on the vehicles and can cause premature uh rusting on the vehicles, or in other places where there's infrastructure, uh, it can cause, you know, those infrastructures made out of metals, it can cause the infrastructure damage. So for these reasons, it is important that when chlorides or salt, sodium chloride, uh whether it's by itself spread out in the you know snowy regions or the icy regions, or industrial from brine water from oil production, uh it is important that if this ends up on the ground it to be remediated, okay? So again, the major concern from the ecological perspective or the agricultural damage is it's very toxic to wildlife and aquatic life. High amounts of chloride are toxic to freshwater fish and aquatic organisms that are in and amphibians that are in freshwater environments, whether it's rivers or ponds or lakes, uh you take that fresh water that those types of things are used to, and somehow chlorides get involved because they're not saltwater fish, they're freshwater fish, and it's toxic to them. Likewise, uh the vegetation in the area, the plants in the soil that typically don't have the salts in them. Well, if if all of a sudden soil becomes uh salty, it loses its ability to retain moisture and store nutrients for the vegetation and the plants, and so it starves those plants and those trees of the water uh through you know, that it needs and stunts the growth or kills them. And like I mentioned earlier, the grass would literally, if salt water was spilled on uh green grass, the next day it'd be brown and dead. So um there's this damage to the ecological side or the environmental or agricultural side, and I mentioned the aquatic piece of it, where uh the death of uh not just the you know the the fish or the it's also the aquatic vegetation uh that is used to those you know uh riverbanks and lake beds, used to having the fresh water as opposed to salt water. So again, this ecological or environmental or agricultural damage that's caused by the salt. Then in addition to that, I mentioned earlier that there's this corrosion piece of it to infrastructure uh and infrastructure made out of metal. There's corrosion that could take place. So structural degradation, uh salt is very corrosive and uh it attacks like uh chlorides attack concrete and it causes cracking and swelling and and uh of the uh of the the concrete, but it also corrodes like steel. So like the bridges and parking lot structures and building structures where there's exposed uh steel, um, the salt will corrode that and cause damage to it and weaken its structure. Um, and then likewise I said how they typically will spray uh either salt water or put out salt directly in you know rock form in the areas where you know it's icy and cold or snowy. Um, well, that that road salt builds up on cars and it accelerates, you know, the rusting of the metal parts to cars and it significantly will reduce the lifespan of vehicles in those colder environments where you know this type of thing is put on the ground, the salt water uh or the rock salt for it, yes, it's making the roadway safer, but yet you know, when that stuff thaws out, it runs off to the side of the road, it's killing the vegetation on the sides of the roads and is damaging the the vehicles, right? So that being the case in those environments, as soon as possible, as it starts to you know warm up, those vehicles need to be cleaned of that that salt, and the uh salt water that was run off to the side of the road or the rock salt that was used, it it it was it's gonna run off when the ice melts, it's gonna run off the side of the road, and you're gonna have dead vegetation on the side of the road. So it needs to be remediated, right? So again, you got the ecological slash environmental slash agricultural damage that it's caused. You've got the infrastructure uh and metal corrosion piece of it, and then of course, it also will get into surface water and groundwater uh through runoff, and uh that's going to, you know, make our water become uh you know salty, which is not gonna taste very good, but also now you've taken fresh water that is not as corrosive uh and you've made it corrosive because it's gonna now move faster and easier because now it's liquid, uh, as opposed to just sitting in in the soil as either uh rock salt or having you know run to the soil and you know slowed down its movement because it you know run off with the water. But now as it gets into fresh water, now you've contaminated the fresh water and the fresh water becomes a corrosive, uh, much more corrosive than it was when it was just fresh water alone. Obviously, water and metals, you're gonna get some rusting effect over time anyway, but you add salt in the mix and that those metals become corrosive real, real fast. So that is the other aspect of you know, uh another damage that happens from chlorides. And it's these these examples are the reason why it is important for us to remediate chlorides, uh, whether it's spilt from logistical transport or it's used for other purposes for safety purposes on our roadways. These are the reasons why it is important that we remediate salt, whether it's from a spill or it's from the safety aspect, as soon as it warms up in those cold environments, we really need to be remediating those chlorides uh uh that were used to make the roadways safe, to protect the vegetation uh on the sides of those roadways, uh, protect our water that it could run off to, and also to protect the vehicles in travel so they don't have the premature rusting of metal parts from the corrosion. And then, of course, uh those vehicles that are are moving on the roadways are also transporting that that salt uh or those chlorides to other areas, and then of course they spread there, and so they can get on infrastructure uh for bridges and you know uh buildings and that type of thing. So it's important that as soon as it warms up in those cold environments that we remediate the salt that was used during that cold season when it warms up. So, again, just to recap, these are the reasons why it is important that we remediate chlorides uh because they have an impact to our ecological, environmental, and agricultural environments, the damage they do there by uh the things that live in those environments, whether it's freshwater fish or aquatic organisms or plant life or trees, uh, or uh it's going to get into our water and it's going to change freshwater sources into uh, you know, salt water. Um and then, of course, the damage is caused to the infrastructure type stuff and metal structures. Um and then, of course, uh anytime it's you're contaminating the freshwater or drinking water into whether the freshwater is lakes, ponds, or that type of thing, that's not a drinking water, but still it's a freshwater source, or into our drinking water, groundwater, these types of things, you're you're making it more mobile than it was uh before. So when it becomes more mobile, it even causes more damage as a corrosive. So it's the these are the important these are the reasons why it's important that we remediate chlorides. And in uh in future episodes, I'm gonna go in more in-depth into uh chlorides and examples of how to remediate and that type of thing. But um that's all I wanted to get through in this 56th episode today. I wanted to get through why it's important to remediate chlorides, and it's because of the damage that the chlorides do. So uh with that, I thank you for tuning in. As always, I say if you have a topic you'd like for us to have on a future podcast, or you have a uh specific question you'd like for us to have addressed, reach out to me via email at my email C Fader. That's C C as in Charles at Fazin Frank A T O R C Fader at letstalkremediation.com, and I will get that on a future podcast. Thank you, Hambian Environmental, for your ongoing support of this podcast. Thank you for tuning in, and with that, I'm your host, Charles Fader, and I'm out.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

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