Fracking, well water, Reverse Osmosis

A lot on the news lately about Fracking and well water. Some say it does and some say it doesn't contaminate water. Some say it causes earth quakes. Some say we have increased oil production because of fracking.

Setting aside all the points above, will an RO water conditioner remove ALL chemicals in drinking water? If so then were do the chemicals go?
geo

Not sure why you want to mix up two unrelated questions, one of which is fairly political.

As for the affects of current drilling practices, I'll point out that nobody has come up with a reasonable alternate explanation for the rapid rise in earthquakes in Oklahoma over the past decade. However, I'm not going to blame "fracking", because fracking has been around for a very long time. The US Geologic Survey says wastewater injection is the primary culprit.

As for reverse osmosis water conditioners, they will not take out "all" chemicals. But RO does a better job of removing contaminants that just about anything short of distillation. As I understand it, RO filters out molecules significantly larger than H2O. RO systems flush the contaminants out of their filters using water which normally goes down the drain.

Just yesterday I went hiking with a gentleman fro Alberta, his neighbor had an oil well drilled, and now they can't drink their water. I guess for now oil is more important than clean water!

I agree. I used a small scale RO unit in Montana and it removed complex molecules like natural gas and salts easily. H2O is pretty small, and the filter only lets about 10% of that go through under pressure of ~250psi. Jim

I am no expert on the subject, and I don't know if anyone on these boards are either. That being said I don't think the news media is qualified to say one way or the other either. I beleive that the problem is they are on the air 24-7, so they have to report something. I don't think that any of them report honestly. I beleive they tell only what will further there own ideas. It is up to each and every one of us to make our own decisions on what is wrong or right, and respect each others decision. That being said I hope everyone has a very Merry and Blessed Christmas.

Bob

For all practical purposes, RO systems will in fact remove 99% + all contaminants. They also remove Calcium and Magnesium which in modest amounts are "good for you". RO water is also fairly "aggressive" meaning you must run it through non metal drinking water lines. If you run it through soldered copper lines you will likely leach out Copper (and Solder) back into the water. As far as where the contaminants go, they are flushed off of the membrane and go down the drain. Depending on the brand, this flushing volume can be anywhere from 1 to 5 gallons for every gallon produced.

George what do you mean by RO Roll off. roll out.radio off, rain over, you get the idea. Consider your non hip followers. I am still upset over your plan to hook horney fish in the act of copulation!!! If you do indeed go south have a great Christmas season. Guess you and I are getting a YT relationship like Glenster and Kruser.LOL Take care of the BOSS !!

Outstanding!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Couldn't have said it better.

reverse osmosis

Reverse Osmosis, as I understand it, is filtration on a microscopic level. It removes any molecules larger than the H2O molecule. So anything smaller is free to pass through along with the water molecules.

A few years back I worked at a place with an E-Coat paint system. It involved the use of many chemicals, so the city got involved with what could be put down the drain.

One of the biggest concerns was "dissolved heavy metals" which could not be put down the drain. We had to install a complex filtration system to separate them out. At the time we were told there was no filtration system that could catch dissolved (attached) metals. What we had to do was add another chemical that would attach to the contaminated molecules and make them large enough for the filter membrane to catch them, a process called "flocking".

As far as I know, that still applies, that dissolved metals cannot be filtered out without a secondary process.

Possibly a water analysis could tell what contaminates you have, and what process is needed to make it safe.

Trivia info on RO units, or just mind pondering: On my vessel, we made our drinking and boiler water supply by using "steam distillers".
Bean counting engineer decided to remove a 45 ton[ of water] steam unit and replace with a 20 ton RO unit...all electric, no steam costs...
All installed, running and water test came back: Material output fit for human consumption with high levels bodily acids present
[ basically it would not filter the stuff used to make "yellow" snow .
So when entering a harbour it had to be shut down x number of miles outside the harbour due to sewage disposal in the water.
The make you think about the report was it also stated this same water WAS NOT FIT FOR BOILER FEED WATER Purposes....
....It suffered a major breakdown and removed the following year during refit..:}

kruser and i are good friends!! we should be getting together after christmas for another yt midwest round up. lot of good goffin off, horsing around and tall tales get told at the round up. you fellers outa (is that a word?) plan on attending this year. we generalyy meet at a restaurant fer some tasty vittles, and then check out something tractor related. not sure if its gonna be near centralilbalers area er not, still up in the air. its a great time and you get to put faces on all the people here!! some need to use a little more handsome cream than other guys tho............

Daytime dramas became knows as 'soap operas' because their goal was to sell a lot of soap to housewives with the tv on that time of day.

Tv news is in the same category, their goal is to sell ad space, commercials. It's not journalism, it's commercialism.

Paul

BOSS is an accomplished navigator. Knows how to use google maps on smart phone. It is better than Garmen. We really rely on it. We like driving and going through Alabama. Going to try some back roads a retired guy told me about and some short cuts around Nashville to avoid traffic jams.

Waiting for the next full moon. For some reason a cold snap and a full moon the fish get horney. My sister knows how to fry them. Tastes great, worth trip. Not looking forward to gaining weight back, but a guy has to do what a guy has to do.

Then I've never been to the Keys. Planning on driving there and doing some site seeing and eating at different places. My test for the best place to eat is see how many cars are in the parking lot. No cars, I keep looking for a better place.

Geo

Mark,
If you must know, Terre Haute is surrounded by oil wells. Closest one is 2 miles south of me. Twice we've signed five year non production mineral rights and gotten $500. Many times a thumper truck is driving on the road in front of house. They have put down two wells about a mile away, looking for shale gas. To my understanding, fracking is used to get the gas out of the well.

It was explained to me, take the money, or we can get the lease through eminent domain. So far leases have expired, but I'm thinking some day I may be faced with fracking. I even stated my post isn't about the right or wrong of the pratice I want to know if RO will remove ALL CHEMICALS from well water.
Including the chemicals used in fracking.

Don't you think I have a right to ask this question?
geo

Where I live here in central Ohio there were about 16 "Clinton formation" wells drilled with in a 2-3 mile radius of me, 2800-3200 ft deep, and 3 Rose Run formation wells at around 7,000ft,, all were Fracked..I have a very good water well drilled to 100 ft. good clear tasty water..Fracking did not effect any ones water around here..Just saying..a lot of blown out of portion news out there..Some areas will have bad water no matter what happens,,same with earth Quakes,, there is a very deep salt water disposal well,about 10,000 ft. deep south of me about 7 miles that have been taking in water for the past 35 years,,also with no affect to the area... there is also 3 "major" pipe lines west of me 2 miles that go east and west to Texas and Oklahoma, one is the Rocky express, one is 48" the other 2 are 30",,no issues from them ether..It seems that a lot of bad publicity is put out there by a few that really have no idea of what they are talking about..

I worked in the oil patch around here in the first run in the Clinton formation , now depending on what countys the drill took place the depth of those wells ranged from down where i live to up to 8600 plus feet deep to as shallow as 3200 feet up by the lake (lake Eire) . My job was to build the drilling locations help move the rigs in and out , supply water trucks to haul in fresh water for the drilling operation and haul off the PIT water and also haul in the fresh water for the frac tanks and then haul off the frac water once the well was swabed out and kicked off then go back in and reclaim that location . and the one company that i ran got into the injection well business . First thing we did was drill a well way deeper then any of the gas and oil wells into a porous rock formation , then while that was going on we dug and built huge dump pits made out of concrete and built in oil skimmers as with each load of pit water , frac water and salt water (yes salt water ) there was always some oil , not much but it was there with each load and had to be skimmed off . We built a pump house and installed a high pressure pump to inject the water down into the rock formation . First pump was rated for 1250 PSI and ran on a 10 Hp electric motor and was to run 24/7 and be able to pump in oil field terms 600 BBl 's and hour . This part of the operation was not in my job part of the operations as i was inchager of all dozers , water trucks , back hoes and track hoes all semi's pulling the lowboys and floats hauling pipe all the 380 frack tanks and the trucks that moved the tanks and the pipe line crews and equipment and all the mechanic's . In my office i had the company radio and i also handled all radio traffic . The injection well was doing a fine job for awhile with no problems , But one day Louie the guy we put up at the well to oversee it's operation calls me on the radio and said that the pump just up and stopped pumping and would not restart . So i get on the intercom an d call the big boss and tell him. He comes down to my office and gets on the radio and talks to louie a bit and looks at me and says lets go will take your truck as i had a good selection of tools and off we go and drive the fifty miles to the injection well . after some checking i discover that the fuses had blowen in the main box to the motor and a trip to the local hardware store got the pump back up and running . While Doug and i were still there we were watching the pressure gauges and in a short time the pressures started to climb way above what it first started out on as it use to run at 550 -650 psi and it was not long before it was peaking out a it's max of 1250 and causen the motor to pull more amps and it blew the fuses again . So we installed a bigger pump with a bigger motor and for two weeks it ran fine pumping at 1600 psi then the same thing started to happen . So once again we installed two BIGGER pumps with two 100Hp. motors and now we are pumping water at 2800 psi and now we are injecting water at the rate of 1200 BBl.'s a hour . about a month later while setting in my office i fell the building starting to shake rattle and roll and stuff start falling and people start running out of the building . Yep we had and Earth quake here in N/E Ohio , OH guess what it was centered yep you guessed it up around our injection well. And shortly after that the well would not take anymore water and here the thinking head said that we would be able to pump water down that hole for fifty years NOT . So after spending three million to build this set up it was done for . But that did not stop them as the EPA wanted more and so more injection wells were drilled and worked fine FOR A WHILE then Youngstown started having them . When that happened i was long gone from the patch But the one main player that got busted was at one time one of the partners involved in the first on . Now will fracing contaminate drinking water ???? It should not but if there was a failure in the casing of the well or a crack in the rock way down deep in the earth that runs from the frac zone to the ground water table then maybe . Fracing is the injection of water and chemicals and sand under extrem pressures till that rock formation fractures and allows the sand partials to be force in to hild that rock open to allow the gas and oil to flow . Now in the old vertical drilled wells it would allow the gas and oil to seep out of and area of about 40 acres . Now these new horizontal drilled wells cover about 600-650 acres and the tubing is perforated in many places to the end of the hole to allow them ot extract more gas and oil . they are deeper down and can run over a mile from the drilling rig . They use way more water then we did as back then a 10 -14 tank frac was common place and we would place 10-14 300 BBl tanks and fill them in a day , now they are using 550 BBl tanks and using over a million bbls of water and to fill these tanks they are running 10-12 inch plastic pipes buried in the ground leading to the well sights and instead of truck the water like we did for the most part are no pumping it. We started the pumping of water when we could if we had a stream or creek as a cost saving deal as we could place one or two guyas at a drilling location with a couple 3 inch pumps and what they needed and pump the water rather then having four to six 90 BBl water trucks running back and forth sucking water out of a stream or creek . with the three inch pumps we could pump about 1500 ft. with a booster pump half way Then we went to a four inch pump on a 2440 Deere with ft assist and with a second booster we could now pump 3000 feet .and fill in less time . Now are the chemical's used in the fracing of a well nasty , you beat ya .

(In reverse order...)

> Don't you think I have a right to ask this question?

Sure you do. I just think if you don't want the answers to your RO question poofed, it would be a good idea to keep it in a post by itself rather than combining it with a question that is bound to bring out the crazies.

> I want to know if RO will remove ALL CHEMICALS from well water.

No it won't. But that's a question better directed to the manufacturer of the particular system you're considering. You can find performance sheets for a couple of popular Microline filters <a href="http://www.microlinero.com/index.php/download-center/">here</a>.

> To my understanding, fracking is used to get the gas out of the well.

Yes it is. And has been for decades. What is relatively new is the widespread use of horizontal drilling. (By which they can extract your minerals from some distance, BTW.) Widespread use of horizontal drilling, fracking and wastewater injection is believed to be causing a lot of problems, including earthquakes, natural gas leaks and groundwater contamination. But before you get too worked up about what might happen in the future to affect your well water, it might be a good idea to send some samples into the state and see what you have in your water TODAY.

I cannot say with any certainty what negative effects fracking can produce. I can say that two horizontally-drilled and fracked gas wells have been drilled within 1200 feet of my house with no adverse effects whatever. But, as they say, results may vary.

Mark, I don't get worked up. From my point of view, you seem to be the one getting worked up when I post anything.

Don't know what the state tests for, IDEM testes my water my once a year.


Also wondering about cities with lead in water. If RO will solve that problem, then why not use it instead of pointing fingers and wanting to sue the people in charge?
geo

Should have said, "no adverse effects on my water well." No earthquakes hereeen either, but there have been some about 50 miles west in east Texas.

(quoted from post at 14:03:52 12/20/16) A lot on the news lately about Fracking and well water. Some say it does and some say it doesn't contaminate water. Some say it causes earth quakes. Some say we have increased oil production because of fracking.

Setting aside all the points above, will an RO water conditioner remove ALL chemicals in drinking water? If so then were do the chemicals go? geo

Click to expand...

As I understand it "fracking" is done at great depths, well below common water well depth. If done right it doesn't effect anything near the surface. I believe people are reacting to a orchestrated campaign to instill fear in the populous about well drilling and "fracking" with the ultimate goal of stopping it altogether. If you want to live in fear, go ahead, I choose to ignore the hype and know the facts.

FWIW, we have an issue that has lately caused some concern among our local groundwater users regarding naturally occurring Chromium 6. We are talking about in the "parts per billion" but like Arsenic (which we do not have) even those levels are now causing some concern. (IMHO overblown, but that's another story).

At any rate we tested 4 or 5 different brands of RO units, of various service ages. Best was removal of Cr6 to Non Detectible levels, worst was a 95% removal. Price range was $160 to $1200 with no apparent difference in performance in fact the least expensive unit was one of the units that got to ND. Of course that is a limited sample. If you do some searching, you will see that RO units are pretty much the only "Point of Use" units approved by most states for Arsenic and Chromium removal. Also distillers which are kind of rare, but apparently more folks are starting to use them.

For large volume treatment of source or waste water, like someone mentioned, Floculation and Filtration is used, also Weak Based Anion, and Strong Based Anion. Other technologies are also under study. Primary use of large RO units is for desal plants.

There is also, maybe more, concern for "waste water injection" where contaminated water, a byproduct of oil and gas recovery, is pumped back into the ground.

I assume it's pumped into depleted wells or underground reservoirs.

If they put it into an underground reservoir, how would they know how deep it is or where it might end up?

WOW, Are you saying RO put water under 250 psi?

> Also wondering about cities with lead in water. If RO will solve that problem, then why not use it instead of pointing fingers and wanting to sue the people in charge?

Yes you can filter out lead and they are using filters in the fair city of Flint, MI. The issue in Flint is not the lack of technology to eliminate lead from drinking water, but rather that state and city officials took actions that created an unsafe situation where none previously existed, then ignored the issue when it was brought to their attention.

I need to reply to my own post to clarify something. RO systems will work to remove all types of contaminants (my 99 + %), but will not remove 100% (or at least will not be represented to) of any contaminant. Go to the performance sheet of whatever RO unit you are considering and you can see how it performs. Apparently most bottled water suppliers that uses municipal systems as a source, uses RO and carbon filters and UV, but I don't think many or any would actually certify that they have "zero" contaminants.

When Federal or State requirements set a Public Health Goal for potential carcinogens, it is usually a very low number that they estimate to the best of their ability will result in no more than one additional cancer case in one million people who drink something like 2 liters of water a day for 60 years as I understand it.

If you are on a public water supply go to Consumer Confidence Report for your water supplier (2015 is the most recent) and you can get a pretty good idea of what is in your water.

Steve, the waste water that is injected back into depleted wells is very well documented. Each oil/gas well that is drilled is surveyed and logged many times during it's productive life. When it's no longer productive and the owners want to switch it's service to a disposal well it is again surveyed and logged. When an underground salt cavern is to be used for any storage, most are used for Natural Gas/propane they are hollowed out by pumping vast amounts of water into them to dissolve the salt and the brine is disposed of in the injection wells. There are literally thousands of these wells across Texas. All very well documented and under the control of the Texas Rail Road Commission.

"Yes it is. And has been for decades. What is relatively new is the widespread use of horizontal drilling."

Maybe the rubber word "widespread" makes this response legit. Slant hole drilling has been a part of Texas, an oil capitol for 100+ years, for as long as I can remember. Just ask the victims.