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Water Recycling

Chesapeake’s Aqua Renew^® Program

Founded under the concept of water recovery and reuse in 2006, Chesapeake’s Aqua Renew^® program is utilizing state-of-the-art technology in an effort to recycle produced water.

Since this preliminary reclamation project, our focus on reuse and water conservation has become a company-wide endeavor to include a variety of technologies and methods.

For example, our Marcellus Shale operations are treating and recycling a vast majority of the produced water from our operations. At each Marcellus wellsite, produced water is collected and stored in on-site holding tanks before being transferred to central filtration locations where it is pumped through filters designed to remove any suspended solids or particles. The filtered water is then either stored in on-site tanks or transported to the next well scheduled for hydraulic fracturing, commonly referred to as fracing. The water is tested for salt and other mineral content to determine the rate at which it can be blended with freshwater to ensure proper quality and quantity for reuse.

While the recycled produced water must still be mixed with freshwater in order to ensure the proper mixture for fracking, every gallon of produced water the company filters and reuses is one less gallon of water that has to be trucked to a disposal and one less gallon of freshwater that has to be purchased and used.

On average, this process is able to filter and reuse more than 10 million gallons of produced water a month in Marcellus Shale fracking operations. With such large volumes of recycled water, the company is seeing more than just environmental advantages. Chesapeake’s Accounting Department has estimated that this aspect of the process is saving an average of $12 million a year in its Eastern Division alone. The program is garnering results like these throughout its shale play operations.

Chesapeake is continuously looking for ways to expand its Aqua Renew program by evaluating new technology both on its own and through partnership with other industry partners.