LARAMIE, Wyo. — The University of Wyoming’s Hydrogen Energy Research Center (H2ERC) at its School of Energy Resources will participate in a collaborative project that will strive to repurpose water generated during oil and gas extraction.
UW will partner with Los Alamos National Laboratory, Engineering, Procurement and Construction LLC and Williams Energy Services LLC to efficiently produce hydrogen using water thermal desalinization technology and autothermal or steam methane reforming.
In other words, the water produced by oil and gas extraction is usually treated as discardable waste. This new project suggests efficiently converting that wastewater into hydrogen, which can be used as an energy source.
The project will use technology known as supercritical water desalination and oxidation to remove salts, metals and organic molecules from water using heat, which will then be combined with methane to produce hydrogen.
“Water is a very valuable resource in Wyoming and in the arid West,” H2ERC Director Eugene Holubnyak said in a press release. “Hydrogen production requires water to produce so, if we are able to utilize water that would be normally considered a waste product from oil and gas production and turn it into a value-added resource for another energy-producing technology, we are effectively helping two different energy industries in Wyoming while conserving an indispensable resource.”
The project has received a $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management. The grant is awarded as a part of its “Clean Hydrogen Production, Storage, Transport and Utilization to Enable a Net-Zero Carbon Economy” effort. This brings the project’s total budget to $10 million.
“This work in Wyoming and national laboratories is a critical step to advance our strategy to blend hydrogen into the natural gas stream and transport it via existing infrastructure to further improve the emissions footprint of heating, cooling, cooking and power generation,” Williams New Energy Ventures Vice President Brian Hlavinka said.
