XRI’s COO, Dr. Chris Harich, answers this science and technology question during his panel appearance at the 2022 Oilfield Water Markets Conference.
TRANSCRIPTION:
[When it comes to science and technology], where are we spending the most on, are frac and FR. FR is really expensive. It’s this large molecular weight and ionic polymer, so it’s negatively charged. You have a bunch of produced water that’s got a bunch of positively charged catalysts.
Our job as a midstream company, and a recycling company, is to get rid of that stuff so the FR works well, so it’s not carrying iron and it’s carrying frac sand. And so that’s what we do.
[Pertaining to science and technology], we kind of remain technology agnostic. How do we do that quickly – on the fly – at 200,000 barrels a day? How can I take iron that’s a 10, oxidize it, get rid of it and drive it to two or below? Because that’s gonna give you a better well, when you frac that well.
And so our standards, for the most part, we see our operators lowering standards, right? They want, they want iron getting closer and closer to two and below. We process all of our solids onsite, so we bring in presses and we press it all out – again, to remove costs. We take it down to the fundamentals and then we test it every 30 minutes.
We rely on a lot of automation and controls, so it doesn’t kill me from an OPEX standpoint. We gotta rely on automation controls, and so we keep pushing that envelope on cost by bringing in more automation and controls into our platform. And again, that’s shared with the customer. So if I can do it cheaper, I’m sharing that [lesser] cost on to the customer.
MORE Q&A:
To learn the answer to “Are You Able To Help Operators Maximize Volumes For Recycling?, watch here.
To learn the answer to “Are You Tied Into ESG Reporting And Discussions With Your Customers?”, watch here.
