(658h) Capacity Planning Considering Both Large-Scale Conventional Facility and Small-Scale Modular Device for Shale Gas Water Management

Natural gas is one of the most important sources of clean energy. The recent advances in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies have enabled large-scale natural gas production from shale formations in the United States [1]. However, massive hydraulic fracturing has also caused great environmental concerns at the same time, particularly regarding sustainable shale gas water management [2]. Furthermore, development of shale gas resources is generally complex and multi-stage; herein, a variety of decisions must be made simultaneously for both shale gas and water supply chains [3]. In this regard, a shale gas production system usually involves high capital and operating expenditures, and thus discerning the optimal design and planning of it has great economic potential.

Many works have been reported on synthesizing shale gas water network through optimization-based approaches [4]–[6]. Further, detailed shale gas supply chain network design has been integrated with the optimization of shale gas water management [7]–[9]. Most of them reveal the trend of increasingly reusing the generated shale gas wastewater than directly disposing it of, for both economic and environmental purposes. However, rigorous treatment of shale gas wastewater is generally costly, and thus the planning and design decisions associated with the wastewater treatment facilities can decisively affect the optimal water management strategy. Furthermore, since the amount of wastewater produced from an individual well typically decreases rapidly over time, if the generally used large-scale centralized wastewater treatment (CWT) facilities and onsite treatment facilities are always kept open, some of them could be oversized and underutilized over many time periods. On the other hand, the recent concept of modular manufacturing has been proven to have many potential benefits over conventional facilities, such as the improved flexibility and schedule efficiency [11]–[13]. In this sense, it is necessary to establish a more flexible capacity strategy for multiple types of wastewater treatment facility to hedge against the spatiotemporal variation in wastewater production, which can further minimize the cost associated with shale gas water management.

Motivated by this consideration, we adapt our previously developed shale gas supply chain optimization model [10] to allow for flexible management of large-scale conventional facility and dynamic allocation of small-scale modular device for efficient shale gas water management. Specifically, regarding the large CWT and onsite facilities, the planning options including expansion of eligible existing facilities, construction of new facilities at candidate locations, and shut down of underutilized facilities are considered in the proposed model; regarding the small modular device, the design decisions including the number of devices purchased, moved, and sold in each time period are also considered. The main goal is to quantitatively assess the trade-offs between the large conventional facilities and small modular devices, and thoroughly investigate whether using modular device could be a compelling solution to efficient water management. We present a series of case studies based on Marcellus Shale Play to demonstrate the proposed optimization model. The simulation results suggest that utilizing a combination of conventional facilities and modular devices showcases cost savings and operational benefits for shale gas water management than the case with only conventional facilities.

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