INTERVIEW

Acid mine drainage - alternative water

supply for fracking operations
Carolyn Kotsol, CEO and President, Winner
Water Services
Today we speak to Carolyn Kotsol, CEO and President of Winner
Water Services, about water usage in hydraulic fracturing and
how using purified water from abandoned mines, known as acid
mine drainage can have a positive environmental impact.

Monica Thomas (Shale Gas International): Winner Water Services takes acid mine drainage
and purifies it to a degree where it can be used for hydraulic fracturing operations. So, to
begin with: can you explain what acid mine drainage is? Where exactly does it come from?
Carolyn Kotsol (Winner Water Services): Acid mine drainage is from coalmines and other mining
industries, some of these could be mines that have been closed for decades. After mines have been
closed they still leach out components form the mine, these components could be sulphates or
metals; iron, manganese, magnesium, aluminium.
All of the materials that leach out from those mines end up going into water streams as the earth
produces. Its in those water streams that we find what we call acid mine drainage, because it is a
drain really, from these closed mines. It could be from active mines as well, but its primarily closed
mines, where that water is secreting from the earth and its causing problems.
It contaminates aquatic systems, so the fish and turtles and other aquatic species have
contaminated water around them, oxygen is no longer able to be in the water streams and those
species are exposed to some danger because of it.
Another problem with acid mine drainage can be seen in streams as they are produced across the
earth. It looks like they are heavily coloured, with orange or dark red material thats primarily iron
magnesium and aluminium can turn the area around the stream white, so you can see it as well.
Some things you cant see, like sulphates or the other metals, but we know its there and its causing

Click to tweet this

www.ShaleGas.International

problems to the aquatic species.

So thats basically what acid mine drainage is, material that is excreting from old mines and causing
these high metals and other materials to contaminate the water stream.
MT: And is it a particularly bad problem in Pennsylvania, or is it a problem that is more
widespread?
CK: Its really focused on the areas where mining was prevalent, so of course Pennsylvania, West
Virginia, portions of Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia the Appalachian region. But there is another area out
west that also suffers from this, and its Colorado.
Now the mines out there they may not have been coalmines, they may have been gold or silver, or
other metals that they were mining there. But those mines are still going to secrete a lot of the
minerals from the earth, so Colorado, Idaho, Montana, in that region of the Rocky Mountains, they also
see some acid mine drainage from the mines that were closed several decades ago.
MT: That seems like a big environmental problem, doesnt it?
CK: Yes, it is a big environmental problem and whats interesting as well is; in the Appalachian area
they see a lot more rainfall than they do out in the western states, therefore what we see happening
there is some of the acid mine drainage could be diluted down if you have a really wet spring or fall,
or a lot of snowfall over wintertime. But when you go out west, where they struggle to get water, it
becomes a different type of problem just because of the environmental precipitation. But it certainly
is a widespread problem.
MT: So your company takes this highly-contaminated water and you purify it so it can be
used in fracking. But fracking is or is perceived to be at least a very dirty operation.
So one would be excused in thinking that if were going to pump all that water into the
ground, it doesnt really matter whether its clean or dirty. But this is not the case, is it?
CK: Thats a good question and I have a couple of points Id like to make. First of all, in the
Appalachian region, because of all this precipitation that comes down specifically in Pennsylvania,
the Marcellus, and even Utica there are a lot of ponds, rivers, and lakes, with fresh water available
for the shale gas industry.
That water can also be potable water, it can be used for human consumption. So where we come in,
is we take this non-potable water, in fact its a contaminated water stream, and clean it up to a point
to where the hydraulic fracturing industry would like to see it, and thats sort of the second point.
The first point is that its an environmental benefit to re-use a non-potable, contaminated water
stream thats been cleaned up and purified for hydraulic fracturing, in lieu of using fresh water that

Click to tweet this

www.ShaleGas.International

could be used for potable sources.

The second point is; in the hydraulic fracturing industry, the drillers and the producers on the backend
of the process have their own recipe of chemicals that they use to push down into the earth to
extract the gas. Its a proprietary mixture of chemicals that they use to optimise the efficiencies of
the well.
With every recipe that these folks are using in the well, they like to have a fresh and I use fresh
in quotes there water stream to make sure that it doesnt add any more complexity to their recipe.
With the chemicals they are using, they want to have a cleaner water stream, so they know that
their mix of chemicals is still intact and will still produce the efficiency that they need to get out of
that well.

So its important that we provide

Oil and gas companies are becoming
them with a water stream that
more and more environmentally
doesnt interfere with their chemicals,
friendly... their shift towards being
but we also want to be kind to the
more environmentally conscious is
environment and provide them with
one of the reasons why they wanted
a water stream that were not taking
to be a part of this.
away from human consumption. Were
truly purifying a contaminated stream
and purifying it to provide them with a cleaner water stream that they can use.

MT: We all know that fracking operations are very water-intensive and according to the UK
Department of Energy and Climate Change, each fracking operation requires between 10 to
30 million litres of fresh water. So how much of that water would you be able to provide
through your water purification system, can you actually provide as much as 30 million
litres of water from acid mine drainage?
CK: Thirty million litres is equivalent to just around eight million gallons of water. So to answer your
question yes, we can provide eight million gallons. And that is the range that we see our potential
customers in the oil and gas industry looking for.
Winner Water Services have two locations, where we are cleaning up acid mine drainage water, and
they are specifically located near the Appalachian region, so near where the Marcellus Shale activities
are happening. Our facilities there are right next to a mine, one of which has been closed since 1980,
and so we take the water, clean it up and then we have it available for the oil and gas industry close
to the facility.
And we are able to provide them with water upwards of five million gallons at a time depending on
their fracking needs.

Click to tweet this

www.ShaleGas.International

MT: That would certainly take away the pressure from the utilities, because from what I
understand, most fracking operations and thats what would happen in the UK, if fracking
took off here is that the water for fracking is usually taken from utility companies and
municipal sources.
CK: Youre right and thats where we really feel that its important that we as a company, and even
our message out to environmentalists and others in the community is that the shale gas industry is
a good industry; its an industry that provides us with a lot of energy stability as a nation, and going
forward in the UK as well, provides a nation a lot of security.
So its something that we know we want to have, but in order to do it in an environmentally safe
mode and to not deplete the human consumption of this water its definitely needed for humans
we try to take this contaminated stream so folks dont have to go to the municipal water sources to
purchase their water.
MT: So, can you tell us a little bit more about how you go about purifying acid mine
drainage? I believe you have a system called HydroFlex?
CK: HydroFlex is a patented process that Winner Water has. We take the contaminated water stream
that is heavy with metals sulphate, iron, and other metals and our process interacts with that
water stream with a specific extractive blend.
Its an oil-based blend of different chemicals and because its oil oil and water dont like to be
together much - it separates very well. Its a bit like taking your oil and vinegar salad dressing; when
you shake it up in the bottle and then let it sit it separates, you get the water at the bottom and the
oil at the top.
What were doing is the same thing. Were taking this extractive blend and were interacting it and
mixing it up with the acid mine drainage water, and in that process of mixing, a chemical reaction
occurs. What happens is that ionically, this extractive blend that we have, goes out and specifically
grabs the iron ions and sulphate ions, and it removes them from the water.
Then we let that material sit and settle out, and in the settling process the extractant goes to the
top and the clean water goes to the bottom. We then take out that clean water at the bottom and
we can reach less than 100 parts per million of sulphate, often-times less than 20 parts per million
of sulphate, depending on the incoming stream and how contaminated it is, and less than five parts
per million of iron. So from the water that comes in, the water that leaves after it interfaces with the
extractant is your cleaned water.
The top layer though, the extractant, is now laden with sulphate and iron, so we need to remove
that in order to re-use the extractant again. We have to make this plants economics work for us and
be economical and competitive with other technologies and other water sources. We take the top

Click to tweet this

www.ShaleGas.International

portion of that blend the extractant and we send it through another series of steps where we
remove the sulphates and the iron and then we send that cleaned extractant back to the front end of
the process to interact with water once again and repeat the process.
MT: What do you do with the contaminants that are removed? How are they disposed of?
I read somewhere that the sulphates that you remove can be then used to treat flowback
water to remove some of the total dissolved solids. Can you tell us more about that?
CK: In the portion of our process where we clean up the extractant, we use a sodium carbonate, so
again we have an ionic exchange going on where the sodium and the sulphate counter-act with the
carbonate. So now we have this sodium sulphate material that we create in the back end and sodium
ferrate, thats like an iron material, that comes off.
The sodium sulphate, specifically, can be
reused as a potential co-product for the
oil and gas industry. We create that as
we extract the sulphate back off of our
extractant, its intermingled with a sodium
carbonate so the end material is a sodium
sulphate and that is our co-product that
could be reused.
Sodium sulphate is one of those materials
that the oil and gas industry uses in the
recipe that I mentioned earlier on, in that mix of chemicals that they use in wells.
MT: When it comes to flowback water, is it also something that you would be looking at
purifying or are you just concentrating on the acid mine drainage?
CK: We look at other water streams as well. Acid mine drainage is where we had started our
investigation, but as our plant operates and gives us more encouraging data, we are looking
at flowback water, at produced water, and looking closely at how HydroFlex, or perhaps other
technologies could be integrated to clean up those water streams as well.
MT: I read about your cooperation with the non-profit research and development
organization Battelle. Can you tell us how the idea for the Hydro Flex system came about?
CK: The origin of HydroFlex did come out of Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, and it was
around 2003 when they developed this technology for mining water. So whether it was coal, gold or
silver mining operations, Battelle was looking at the water stream that was discharged from those
plants and cleaning it up to produce a cleaner water stream from it.

Click to tweet this

www.ShaleGas.International

Winner Water Services was created in 2013 as a part of a partnership with Battelle, we are primarily
owned by Battelle and the Winner family thats a family out of Sharon, Pennsylvania, who also came
forward with a contribution to form this company.
So we are a split; 58 percent owned by Battelle, 42 percent owned by the Winner family, and in that
forming of the Winner Water Services, Battelle has provided the IP and the know-how behind running
and using HydroFlex in these applications and the Winner family has IP as well, that they provided to
form the company.
So the idea started at Battelle Memorial Institute and evolved through the years and in the ten years
between 2003 and 2013, Battelle and the Winner family went from the bench scale in the lab to create
a pilot scale in St Michaels, Pennsylvania, and ran that plant for a few years, and now we are set up
as a company, Winner Water Services, where we are running our plants at 100 gallons per minute
rate, to further commercialise this technology.
We have two plants running. One is in Sykesville, Pennsylvania, the other is in Sarver Pennsylvania.
Now only one of the plants, the plant in Sarver, has HydroFlex running on it. In the plant in Sykesville,
we use other technologies that we have available to us in our portfolio.
MT: I wanted to ask you about efficiencies. Because the water that you are selling to the
shale drillers the environmental dimension of it is huge and incredibly important but
money-wise, is that water cheaper than what they would get from utilities companies or is
there a premium to be paid for it being more environmentally-friendly?
CK: We are cost-competitive with the other water streams that they have available. The biggest
factor in the cost when you look at the economics behind all this is the transportation cost. So its
where our plant is physically located relative to where the end well is located. If you have a 30-mile
distance between the two, the cost of getting it from our facility to the well could be higher than if
they had a source that is closer to their site.
It really comes down to that transportation cost. But in terms of straight-up costs per thousand
gallons, we are very competitive. In fact, sometimes we are less expensive than municipal water
sources.
MT: Am I correct in thinking that your facilities are located close to the mines, rather than
close to the wells?
CK: Not necessarily it could be both. For instance, at our facility in Sykesville; there are wells that
are five or six miles away; very close, and the water stream that we are processing is right there as
well, so there are times where the acid mine drainage and the well are very close to one another. In
the Appalachian region, because there is so much fresh water from ponds and lakes available, the
pond may be closer to the wellsite than the acid mine drainage site.

Click to tweet this

www.ShaleGas.International

Thats where our second benefit of providing an environmental reason comes into play.
MT: Would you say that U.S. shale drillers are now becoming more environmentally
conscious and willing to minimise the environmental footprint of their operations?
CK: In the Appalachian region, I would say that oil and gas companies are becoming more and more
environmentally friendly, and I say that because they are reusing a lot of their flowback water from
the well itself. Disposing of that water is very expensive, so there certainly was a cost-impact to their
bottom line in doing that, but they are becoming more environmentally-friendly.
With the Sarver, Pennsylvania plant we are operating under a Department of Energy grant. So the
DoE has provided us with money to demonstrate our technology for the shale gas industry. A part
of our deliverable back to the DoE is having a stakeholders session, and during the stakeholder
sessions we meet with these groups, and Battelle is also a part of this, they are very active.
Every quarter we get together with the
stakeholders, and among the stakeholders are
the oil and gas participants; Statoil and other
participants that are on the stakeholder committee.
We hear directly from them, what they want to see
in terms of how clean the water needs to be, but
were also hearing their environmental interests
that they have as a company and thats really
important for us.
Their shift towards being more environmentally conscious is one of the reasons why they wanted to
be a part of this whole thing.
MT: Are you limited in your service to the Pennsylvania region, or are you thinking of taking
your services further afield?
CK: A part of our growth strategy is to expand to other regions. We see a need and a direct use of
our technology in Pennsylvania and the Appalachian region today, however, as we spoke earlier in
this conversation, the western area of the United States is also in need of help with treating and
cleaning up their contaminated water streams for reuse in industry.
So as I see us today we are rather focused on the Appalachian region, however, weve already
been talking to folks out West on their needs as well. So I can see in the very near future, most likely
within the next year, us pivoting and expanding our focus on the markets out West and, in fact, other
areas of the globe.

Click to tweet this

www.ShaleGas.International

We have also been contacted by Norway. Its another area where they have active mining sites, and
even some closed mining sites where they are interested in applying our technology to clean up
mining waters and reusing it in industrial applications. There are mining sites in Chile and other areas
in South America as well, that are interested in what HydroFlex is doing here, in the Appalachian
region.
And finally, South Africa weve been talking to some folks and an engineering firm there, on their
gold mines that they have in the country and, again, they are doing a lot of active mining in that
region, but they are also creating contaminated water streams that theyve been holding and
containing, but they want to have it cleaned up as well.
So as I see us right now we have been focused on the Appalachian, however in the very near term
we are looking to expand into other areas of the United States and the globe.
You can read more about Winner Water Services solutions including white papers, written in
collaboration with Battelle, on the companys sulphate removal technology on the Winner Water
Services website.
Published: 27th July, 2015

ABOUT SHALE GAS INTERNATIONAL

Shale Gas International is a one-stop-shop for all things shale. Based in London, and with an international appeal, the
Shale Gas International website, newsletter, and focus reports provide oil and gas professionals with timely information
about this fast-paced industry.
For advertising opportunities please contact: sales@mw-ep.com
For editorial queries please contact: info@mw-ep.com
Visit our webiste: www.ShaleGas.International
Find us on social media:

g
twitter.com/ShaleGasInt
l
linkedin.com/company/shale-gas-international
i
facebook.com/ShaleGasInternational
f
google.com/+ShaleGasInternational

Shale Gas International is published by MW Energy Publishing:

MW Energy Publishing
71-75 Shelton Street
Covent Garden
London WC2H 9JQ

Click to tweet this

Telephone/Fax: +44 01792 229999

www.ShaleGas.International