SBIR Phase II: Novel Adsorbents for Selective Removal of Naturally Occurring Radionuclide Materials (NORM) from Fracking-Produced Water

The broader impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is in the oil and gas industry where produced water is generated from conventional oil and gas production and unconventional sources such as coal bed methane, tight sands, and gas shale. The geologic formations that contain oil and gas deposits also contain radionuclides (referred to as Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (NORM)) as well as compounds containing Barium (Ba), Strontium (Sr), and Arsenic (As) that can pose problems with scaling on the equipment and are hazardous to workers' health. Stochastic Research Technologies is developing easily disposable, safe, cost-effective, and customizable clay-based adsorbents to remove As, Ba, Sr, and Radium from produced water. This will enable oil and gas exploration and production companies to reduce their environmental impact, representing a key constraint on their growth. Removing contaminants will allow water to be reused and recycled for agricultural and household needs. The technology is not energy intensive and does not pose scaling or safety concerns like current technologies. Further, the adsorbents result in a small amount of waste, which minimizes disposal costs. The technology is not restricted to removal of just NORM but can also be very useful in applications like removal of PFAS, and recovering important materials like Lithium, rare earth elements. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will develop a unique technology for removing Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (NORM) and other contaminants from produced waters of Oil and gas Industries. Through the development of theory and a novel optimization-based Computer-aided molecular design (CAMD) framework, the company researchers generated order-of-magnitude better clay-based adsorbents than currently commercially available or published adsorbents for removal of produced water impurities. The proposed research and development are of considerable fundamental and practical significance to the wastewater and produced water area. The project addresses important issues concerning group-contribution methods, computer-aided molecular design, NORM removal, and environmental impacts. On the practical side, the NORM removal problem occurs in the oil and gas industries worldwide. The unique adsorbents generated by Stochastic Research Technologies provide a cost-effective, safe, and customized solution to this ubiquitous problem. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.