For several years now, I?ve been assessing policies and technologies that might allow the United States and other countries with vast shale deposits of natural gas to harvest this resource with the fewest regrets.
Below you can learn about one nascent technology to watch in 2013: harmless chemical I.D. tags that could make the fluids used in drilling every single gas well individually identifiable, potentially ending fights over the source of any subsequent contamination of water supplies in a drilling area. This video offers a thumbnail sketch:
But first, it?s worth reviewing some of the other innovations that are being pursued:
As I and others have written repeatedly, there?s plenty that can be done ? often at a profit ? to cut leakage of gas into the air from wells, pipelines, distribution systems and other equipment. There are also ways for communities to?help pinpoint gas leaks and map drilling activities?(good or bad).
Another prime concern is water contamination either from poorly constructed wells or mismanagement of water and other fluids used during hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of wells to liberate gas from the shale. (Here?s an excellent roundup on water issues by Bill Chameides of Duke University.) There?s a substantial push toward recycling and cleaning water used or produced during the fracturing process.?As you may have read, there?s also a water-free form of fracking that could be useful in some situations.
But the most promising new concept I?ve seen on the water-pollution front is introducing a well-specific tracer to fracking fluid. This technology?holds great potential to lower the ?dread to risk ratio? surrounding the hydraulic fracturing process, in which water with traces of other substances is injected into a well at high pressure to fracture deep shale layers holding the gas.
Here?s some background on two approaches that are being pursued.
Mark K. Boling, the president of a division of Southwestern Energy focused on minimizing impacts of its gas drilling, sent the following note when I asked him about the idea of tracers:
We are working with?Rice?University?to develop a new tracer technology for hydraulic fracturing fluids. Unlike the current fluid tracing methods sometimes utilized by the oil and gas industry (radioactive isotope tracers and chemical tracers), this technology uses specially designed nanoparticles that exhibit a unique profile, or ?signature,? that can be detected at low concentrations.?This new tracer technology is a stable, non-invasive, non-toxic tracer that can be used for long term fluid identification.? The current schedule is to complete the laboratory testing by the end of the year and, if successful, start field testing in the first quarter of 2013.
Click here to read about other materials that have been developed at Rice that could cut improve hydraulic fracturing in various ways.
Another approach, using inert DNA sequences as a tag, is being refined and tested by BaseTrace, a startup company created last year by a group of former Duke University graduate students (its name has changed from SafeTNA). The project won initial financial backing through a Duke University program incubating promising startups launched by students and also won $20,000 in seed funding through a competition for promising environmental technologies run by the investment company Cherokee Investment Partners.
I asked Justine Chow, the chief executive officer of BaseTrace, for an update. Here?s her reply:
SafeTNA was founded in early 2012 as an inert DNA-based tracer that could be incorporated into hydraulic fracturing fluid to address contamination concerns. Initial modeling indicated that a thimble-full of the tracer would be detectable under foreseeable conditions, even when mixed with millions of gallons of fluid. The tracer uses a unique, proprietary structure to make it withstand extreme temperatures/pressures and stop codons to make it completely inert. Because DNA has the advantage of providing a near-infinite number of sequence variations, the tracer is well-specific and easily testable. We can verify the tracer presence in frac fluid by testing for it in the flowback water.
In August, SafeTNA got a new name to accompany breakthroughs in the lab?we are now ?BaseTrace?. Our website has background information. Since the summer, we have conducted survivability tests in our Research Triangle Park lab. We have found that the DNA-based tracer survives when mixed with samples of hydraulic fracturing fluid and flowback fluid. Likewise, it survives up to two months exposed to UV in water and flowback, much like conditions in surface impoundment ponds where flowback is being recycled.
Moving into 2013, BaseTrace is partnering with North Carolina firms to conduct a few laboratory tests involving industry standards and extreme conditions. We aim to conduct field testing with an industry partner and roll this out commercially before the end of the year. Next, a simple hydrological study involving tracing groundwater will indicate its viability for detecting contamination over long distances. Based on current lab tests, BaseTrace will be pursuing a dual regulatory and commercial marketing strategy in the late summer of 2013. The process and idea are currently patent-pending.
Our team is all less than one year out from finishing graduate school at Duke (with degrees in environmental science, engineering, law, and business), and we really hope to make a difference by providing answers where previously there were none.
It?s great to see young innovators pushing hard to turn bright ideas into businesses. If you didn?t read about him last year, check back on Eben Bayer, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute?graduate who, with a partner, has turned fungi into a factory (and 40 jobs).
The failure rate for such enterprises is high, but that?s the price of entry on the path to breakthroughs.
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