Extraction of values-added minerals from produced water through novel multistage nanofiltration

The lack of U.S. domestic lithium and other rare earth elements (REE) production is critical. The push towards renewable energy sources has led to a focus on exploring and recovering critical and rare earth elements, especially Lithium and Magnesium from different resources such as the produced water from the oilfields. Greenpath systems plan to bring to market a new generation of continuous membrane cascade system for extracting critical minerals from oilfield-produced waters. In Phase I, GreenPath systems (GPS) have teamed up with the University of Oklahoma with expertise and resources to produce water treatment using novel nanofiltration membranes and conduct bench-scale laboratory work on produced waters from several oil and gas water streams in the US. This project has been leveraged by access to produced water samples and unique facilities at the STTR institution. This project's proprietary and novel process can be licensed to different entities interested in investing in rare earth elements (REE) extraction from shale-produced waters. This will ultimately benefit the public, government, and private companies. In Phase II, after proving the commercial viability, the team will scale up the process as filed demonstration phase. A detailed modeling and simulations campaign carried out with the experimental work will provide the basis for the design of larger, commercial scale systems. The treatment employs multistage filtration processes to separate lithium and magnesium salts from each other and from other cation salts in produced water. Microfiltration membranes, ultrafiltration membranes, and several nanofiltration membranes are installed in series to develop a membrane cascade.