Ohio University’s Institute for Sustainable Energy and the Environment (ISEE) was recently awarded $2 million in federal and state grants to support research to clean wastewater that results from hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”.
The money was granted by the Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America (RPSEA) and the Ohio Third Frontier. RPSEA awarded $1.9 million to fund ISEE’s project “Cost-Effective Treatment of Flowback and Produced Water via an Integrated Precipitative Supercritical Process (IPSC).”
The rest of the money came from the Ohio Third Frontier, the Russ College of Engineering and the OU Technology Transfer Office.
“ISEE is composed of different research centers and laboratories on campus all working on sustainable energy practices to minimize damage to the environment,” said Jason Trembly, associate director of the Ohio Coal Research Center and principal investigator for the project.
All the research for the project will be completed within the Russ College of Engineering and Technology at OU. The project will continue for 24 months and Trembly hopes that after those 24 months the research will continue on a larger scale.
Over the duration of the project Trembly and other researchers will create a prototype that will help to treat wastewater so that the water can be reused, Trembly said.
