Distillation Process Is Proposed for Cleaning Up the Very Dirty Waste Water Created by Fracking
Claiming that its method turns the very salty waste of hydraulic fracturing into a product that can be sold as bottled water, a company called Altela is seeking investors for its distillation process.
“Our technology is not new. It has been around for four and a half billion years. So we clean water in the same way that Mother Nature has been cleaning water for a long time,” said Todd Hand, vice president of marketing and sales.
Promoters of the plan say that the distilled frack water can be discharged into rivers and streams, into the ground, or sold as bottled water.
The interesting part of the proposal is that Atela representative Todd Hand seems say that the process is virtually energy free. Mr. Hand claims that Altela is offering a more affordable alternative to water treatment. Because conventional thermal distillation processes rely on high temperature and high pressure units, “They have to use really expensive metals in their unit. We get away from that because we don’t use high temperature and high pressure,” he said.
Mr. Hand also said Altela’s technology is a zero energy gained, zero energy lost process. “We’re able to recapture [the] energy and use it to heat up the next drop of water,” he said.
Exactly how that might work is not explained.