STTR Phase I: Novel Adsorbents for Selective Removal of Naturally Occurring Radionuclide Materials (NORM) from Fracking-Produced Water

这个小企业技术转让（STTR）第一阶段项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是提供一种新颖且具有成本效益的技术，以从水力压裂产生的废水中去除NORM（自然降解的放射性物质）。该研究对油田采出水处理领域具有重要的理论和实际意义。所提出的方法旨在有效地从采出沃茨中去除99%的NORM，这是环境处理的一个重要进步。预计这种方法还将降低处理技术的成本以及对每桶天然气和石油成本的相关影响。该STTR第一阶段项目旨在验证与水力压裂相关的新型吸附剂废水净化的有效性。含有石油和天然气矿床的地质构造含有天然可吸收的放射性核素物质，称为NORM。 石油和天然气压裂将NORM以集中的形式带到地表，构成辐射安全隐患。目前市场上没有商业产品可从浓缩的采出水中去除NORM并选择性地回流。 通过使用基团贡献法（GCM）和基于优化的新型计算机辅助分子设计（CAMD）框架开发理论和计算方法，该团队试图生成比目前市售的更好的粘土基吸附剂，用于去除采出水杂质。在商业化之前，需要通过合成新的吸附剂并将其吸附行为与理论预测的等温线进行比较来实验验证建模结果。 这项研究可能会导致高效和具有成本效益的吸附剂定制的水污染的类型遇到使用新的CAMD框架和尖端experiments.This奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准的支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project is to provide a novel and cost-effective technology to remove NORM (Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials) from the wastewater produced by fracking. The proposed research is of fundamental and practical significance to the area of produced water treatment. The proposed approach seeks to remove 99% of NORM from produced waters effectively, an important advance for environmental treatment. This approach also is expected to reduce the cost of the treatment technology and the associated impact on cost per barrel of gas and oil. This STTR Phase I project proposes to verify the effectiveness of new adsorbents waste water clean-up associated with fracking. The geologic formations containing oil and gas deposits contain Naturally Occurring Radionuclide Materials, referred to as NORM. Oil and gas fracking brings NORM to the surface in a concentrated form, posing a radiation safety hazard. There is currently no commercial product on the market to remove NORM from concentrated produced and flow back water selectively. By developing theory and computational methods with the Group Contribution method (GCM) and a novel optimization-based Computer-Aided Molecular Design (CAMD) framework, the teams seeks to generate better clay-based adsorbents than are currently commercially available for removal of produced water impurities. The modeling results need to be verified experimentally by synthesizing thenew adsorbents and comparing their adsorption behavior to the theoretically-predicted isotherms before commercializing them. The research may result in efficient and cost-effective adsorbents customized for the type of water contamination encountered using the new CAMD frameworks and cutting-edge experiments.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.