Produced Water
Categories: Econ, Company Management
Produced water isn’t manufactured in a lab, and it’s far from clean. It’s the leftover water after extracting oil and gas out of the ground. Yummy.
Since water is in the ground, sometimes it gets mixed up with the gas and oil, getting extracted too. Other times, oil drillers use waterflooding, injecting water into the ground to increase the pressure and extract the oil and gas. When water’s been hanging around gas and oil for too long, it gets a lot of dissolved solids in it that are hard to get out. Sometimes they’re radioactive. While it used to be cool just to leave water there, i.e. let it evaporate...that’s become uncool. Because industrial waste ain't cool or Kosher.
Sometimes produced water is treated, but pretty much only if it’s required by law. It’s really expensive, so it’s more likely to be disposed of somehow than treated. That being said, all kinds of cool, sciencey stuff has come out of produced water, like gravity separators and hydrocycles. Not to be confused with the superhero villains.
