Mineralization of the produced water cations to concrete

C56-25c-273062In oil and gas industry, produced water is considered as the largest waste stream, estimated to be>70 billion/yr barrels in the world. The Delaware and Midland Basins in the US yield ~4 billion/yr barrels of produced water, which represent only 16% of the total U.S. volume of produced water. The Sodium (Na) concentration in the produced water of these basins is ~43,000 mg/l, which suggests up to 26 megatonnes of Na could be available for mineralization with CO2, translating to capturing over 50 megatonnes of CO2 annually. In addition to Na, produced waters contain significant concentrations of Mg, Ca, and other cations. It is technologically and economically challenging to mineralize CO2 via cations of produced water as a commodity product. Capitalizing on our promising preliminary results, the overarching objective of this project is to demonstrate feasibility of mineralization of CO2 from point sources (e.g., fossil-fuel power plants) and cations of produced water to a special formulation of concrete. This phase I SBIR project will demonstrate manufacturing feasibility of conversion of CO2 from synthetic flue gas to cations of produced water by optimizing the process yield, CO2 uptake, performing standard testings on concrete samples, and techno-economical analysis (TEA) and life cycle analysis (LCA). There is no high temperature calcination step in our manufacturing. Our technology works for both precast and cast-in-place concrete, enabling wide applicability. This technology would be the harbinger for ubiquitous use of produced water (both its cations and actual water) and CO2 as an abundant and low-cost source to make concretes. C-Crete’s experience in projects with similar complexity along with our state-of-the-art facilities and equipment and relationships with key industry players will catalyze our commercialization efforts.