Aerobic biological degradation of organic matter and fracturing fluid additives in high salinity hydraulic fracturing wastewaters

Abstract Reuse of hydraulic fracturing wastewaters depends on effective tailored treatment to prepare the water for the intended end use. Aerobic biological treatment of hydraulic fracturing produced water was examined to degrade dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and polyethylene glycols (PEGs). Biological treatment experiments of three produced water samples with DOC concentrations ranging from 22 to 420 mg/L and total dissolved solids (TDS) levels ranging from 26 to 157 g/L were conducted in 48–240 h batches. Samples were not pretreated to remove suspended solids and were inoculated with activated sludge and acclimated over several weeks. Results show that between 50% and 80% of DOC was removed in 12–24 h but a sizeable portion, on a mass basis, remained in the samples with higher DOC concentrations. PEGs were also shown to readily biodegrade into singly- and doubly-carboxylated metabolites, but were not shown to degrade past that point, leading to accumulation of PEG-dicarboxylates (PEG-diCs) in the batch reactors. Possible explanations include residence times that were too long, resulting in starved microbial populations (and thus, a stopping of PEG degradation) or the presence of other ethoxylated additives that degraded into PEGs and PEG-diCs and fed this accumulation. This work demonstrates that a well-acclimated microbial culture is capable of degrading a large portion of DOC in wastewaters across a wide spectrum of TDS concentrations, indicating that biological treatment is a viable option for enabling reuse of produced water.