An estimated 168 billion gallons of wastewater — or produced water — is generated yearly by the Permian Basin fracking trade, in line with a 2022 report by the Texas Produced Water Consortium. The foremost waste stream has proved each tough and expensive to deal with due to the chemical complexity of the water.
In a brand new research revealed within the journal Water, researchers at The College of Texas at El Paso have recognized a novel technique of treating the wastewater generated by oil and fuel manufacturing: bacteriophages.
Ramón Antonio Sánchez, a doctoral candidate inside UTEP’s chemistry program, is the primary writer on the publication, detailing how bacteriophages, viruses which might be typically extremely particular and deadly to a single species of micro organism, can be utilized as a fast and cost-effective methodology to deal with produced water on an industrial scale.
Sánchez stated if the work is profitable, it could give the oil and fuel trade a way of treating, reusing and recycling produced water, reasonably than the present trade observe of disposing nearly all of produced water by injecting it into the bottom publish oil exploration.
The analysis focuses on two of essentially the most distinguished micro organism discovered inside produced water throughout the oil and fuel trade — Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Bacillus megaterium. P. aeruginosa has the power to corrode stainless-steel and presents a problem for the longevity of pipelines and different metal-based infrastructure, whereas B. megaterium, can decompose hydrocarbons — the idea for oil.
Sánchez, together with considered one of his collaborators, Zacariah Hildenbrand, Ph.D., a UTEP alum, have been impressed to make use of bacteriophages based mostly on their purposes within the medical trade, the place they’re used to fight infections brought on by multi-drug resistant micro organism.
“For the reason that micro organism live organisms, over time they developed a resistance, within the type of a much less penetrable membrane, to conventional disinfectants,” Sánchez defined. “However the bacteriophages, that are viruses themselves, connect to particular receptors on the floor of the host cell and evolve alongside the micro organism they’re attempting to contaminate, that means that any resistance acquired by the micro organism triggers the modification of bacteriophages to maintain the an infection going.”
The group’s experiments with bacteriophages have been efficient, attaining the inactivation of each P. aeruginosa and B. megaterium in laboratory settings. For Sánchez, who graduates this spring together with his Ph.D., the work will proceed within the trade the place his focus will likely be on replicating his laboratory outcomes out within the area. He can even attempt to broaden the variety of microorganisms that may be handled in produced water by securing a bigger catalog of bacteriophages.
The group admits the method does have its challenges. There are at the moment a restricted quantity of commercially out there Bacteriophages, which is vital since bacteriophages are sometimes extremely particular to a single species of micro organism. There are additionally different species of micro organism in produced water that stay to be examined.
