UTA Researchers Looking To Improve Environmental Impact From Fracking

ARLINGTON, Texas (CBSDFW.COM) -  Research from a group of students and professors at the University of Texas at Arlington is leading to new technologies that will make the use of water during fracking procedures more eco-friendly.

The work is coming out of the Collaborative Laboratories for Environmental Analysis and Remediation or CLEAR.

Dr. Kevin Schrug who is heading up the research in partnership with Challenger Water Technologies, says they have figured out how to filter and recycle the water from oil fields and reuse it during fracking.

"The waste water produced from the oil and gas process is extremely complex," said Dr. Schrug.

CLEAR teams have come up with a non-chemical treatment procedure that uses both modular and fixed filtration devices to clean the water by-products from the oil fields so that it can be used again.

Shrug said the benefit is two fold, the process keeps water waste from being injected in the ground minimizing the threat of earthquakes, and fracking crews won't have to draw from limited water resources.

"If you are drawing millions and millions of gallons out of a particular aquifer then you can have localized zones of depletion," said Dr. Shrug. "The particular system that we evaluated could run through and treat up to 15-thousand barrels a day so that is massive if you think each barrel is 40-some gallons of water."