Texas treatment company spins off frac water firm

A company called Green Hydro LLC has been spun off by Texas-based Advanced Hydro Inc to use desalination to address increasing demand for water use in hydraulic fracturing.

Advanced Hydro announced on 29 October 2013 that it has completed financing and partnership agreements with an Israeli investment firm to spin off Green Hydro to develop and desalinate environmentally sustainable brackish water resources in Texas, New Mexico, and North and South Dakota.

Green Hydro is licensing and using a desalination technology developed by Advanced Hydro, which claims significantly reduced operation and maintenance costs, an integrated turnkey system with open architecture (patent pending), high efficiency, remote operations, mobile platform and antifouling membrane coatings technology.

Advanced Hydro plans to develop and deploy a fleet of advanced brackish water desalination systems in Texas and New Mexico over next couple year. In addition, the company has signed an agreement for water rights for its first site in West Texas and expects to begin water production in early 2014 for fracking activities.

In 2009, Advanced Hydro was set up to commercialize a novel antifouling membrane coatings technology developed at the University of Texas at Austin. This hydrophilic polymeric coating applied to post-production filtration and desalination membranes makes them resistant to oil and organic fouling. The company now provides turnkey systems for desalination of brackish groundwater or seawater and for purification and reclamation of oil & gas related wastewater such as produced water and flow-back.

“A single frac job in these areas requires nearly 3,000 trucks to move water from various purchase points to the frac sites. This is causing serious strain on the local communities, roads and environment” says Dr Agnihotri, CEO of Advanced Hydro.

“It also causes diversion of water allocated for crops which is then permanently lost from the supply chain, and the Green Hydro venture allows us to address a demand and supply problem while reducing trucking, emissions, and competition for agricultural water by tapping brackish water resources that are plentiful in these regions,” Agnihotri added. “It also enables oil companies to cost effectively develop fields that have lacked fresh water while also allowing them to reduce their environmental impact, and it’s a win-win scenario.”