Annually, the oil and gas industry around the globe produces at least 70 billion barrels of what is known as “Produced Water.” This water is incredibly contaminated and some of the contaminants can cause disease and birth defects—in addition to damaging local and regional ecology.
In many locations water is contaminated or non-existent. Converting produced water to clean, safe water creates an entire new stream of "found water."
Yet, this water can be cleaned and turned into Found Water: water that is pure enough to be used for agriculture, livestock, and human use.
Why go to that effort? Because increasingly we need every drop of clean water we can wring out from every source possible. Read previous post on water.
Water = Food
You see, we don’t just need water to drink, or bathe. We also need it to run power plants for electricity, and to grow food. Most people don’t think about that one: how much water is required to grow food? Let’s look at the impact, and the amount of water needed to grow food and keep us alive.
Essentially, every calorie of food requires a litre of water to produce it. So on average, we require between 2,000 and 3,000 litres of water per person to sustain our daily food requirements. Here are some examples.
We can turn Food Insecurity into Food Security by turning Produced Water into Clean Found Water.
In many places, the oil and gas industry is trying to do the responsible thing and dispose of its “produced water” in a manner that will not affect the local groundwater or sources of water. Companies pay an enormous amount of money to transport that water away from local communities or pay to clean it up. Dealing with produced water is one of the most expensive problems the oil and gas industry, along with the mining and manufacturing industries, faces today. Unfortunately, in other places, less responsible companies just dump it and subject the local community’s inhabitants to very hazardous substances.
Produced water from oil & gas and mining work can be cleaned up and turned into "Found Water" to grow crops. New technology such as IX Power's OrganiClear can make it easier and more affordable to clean up produced water so it can be re-used to solve the Food Insecurity problem.
So, we need water for many things, and we certainly need it to produce food. Industry creates a lot of produced water. Let’s clean it up and use it! How? With new technology such as IX Power’s OrganiClear™ which removes the most dangerous parts (the BTEX: organic hydrocarbon compounds) without leaving another waste stream behind to deal with. We invite you to read about IX Power’s OrganiClear by clicking here. But, we also want to know about other technologies that can be used in the fight to clean up produced water. It’s a big problem and we need everyone working on it…!
The next time you eat a meal, stop and think how much water it took to grow it!