Orion Water Solutions adjusts treatments to keep output consistent as water quality changes

By Warren Sumner, President Orion Water Solutions

Do you have a favorite barbecue place? One that for sure, every time you go there, you know that brisket will be falling-apart tender and the smoky flavor will be bursting forth all the way through every bite? Or does your place sometimes have a bad day, where the meat just doesn’t meet your standards? After all, a lot of folks can cook brisket, but how many can put out great product every single day?

Treating produced water is a lot like barbecue—you’ve got to stay on it all the time to make sure what comes out is just what the customer is expecting. So that’s what we do, whether we’re running a mobile unit to follow the frac spread or we’re operating a fixed facility to supply a large field.

More and more producers are looking to economize their produced water re-use program by using a hub-and-spoke configuration to aggregate produced water, treat it at a central battery, then send it back out for frac jobs and work overs with a booster treatment before it goes down hole.

You may well imagine that, just like a restaurant’s brisket supply, the water chemistry from producing wells that flow into a treatment system changes rapidly over time. New wells come on, existing wells’ chemistry changes over their lifetimes, wells go offline for repairs—you get the picture.

Plus, it’s surprising how little mixing happens as water from various sources flows through pipes and in-and-out of tanks. After hours in the system there will still be clearly defined layers of water with varying chemistry!

So it’s very apparent that just because a water treatment company promises they can meet your standards does not mean they can do it day in and day out as conditions change.

I’ve noticed that the best barbecue joints are really careful about controlling their smoking process. At one of our projects, we’ve been treating water for a major 24/7 at a central battery for more than five years, and we’ve had opportunity to con-tinually improve our process through advanced data capture and analysis, and implementing new ideas with the customer. We’ve built everything we’ve learned into our monitoring and treatment procedures, so we’re giving you a product that meets your expectations day after day, regardless of what changes are happening in the field.

Proper water treatment reduces waste and can provide a frac fluid that is more compatible with the formation, both of which will improve any producer’s bottom line. Let us know how we can help, whether you’re starting a new water treatment program or you’re unhappy with the one you have.

Call us at (432) 219-8100