[Subjectivist]

For the drilling experts, if you wanted to drill a well specifically to produce brine water how much would it cost compared to other types of wells? Presumably because of corrosion the well casing would have a limited lifetime.

The reason I ask is Ohio has adopted a new winter deicing plan for major roads. Instead of spreading rocksalt only after snow has begun to accumulate they have been spraying brine on the roads when snow is predicted. Some places have even been using low contaminated frack waste water as road spray.

Rather than using frack waste water or making brine from rocksalt and fresh water I would prefer them that they just pump up brine water already mixed in the ground and use it for road spray. However if the cost to do it that way is excessive I would feel differently lol.

[Paulo1]

Our local Highways Contractor has been using brine for a few years. I have never had so many problems with my brakes. When I was commuting I had to fix brakes on a regular schedule. The rotors would totally rust up even though I sprayed everything hot with fresh water, often. I think it is cheaper and that is why they do it, plus they can pick their time and don't have to pay ot; spreading salt at 3:00 am for example.

If I had my choice I would try and get the utility to stop spreading brine, period. Salt is bad enough.

Paulo

[Subjectivist]

Our local Highways Contractor has been using brine for a few years. I have never had so many problems with my brakes. When I was commuting I had to fix brakes on a regular schedule. The rotors would totally rust up even though I sprayed everything hot with fresh water, often. I think it is cheaper and that is why they do it, plus they can pick their time and don't have to pay ot; spreading salt at 3:00 am for example.

If I had my choice I would try and get the utility to stop spreading brine, period. Salt is bad enough.

Paulo

Funny you have had brake trouble, mine were checked last spring and declared fine but now I am getting grinding noises 9 months later. I would just as soon go back to the rocksalt becauses the roads don't seem to be improved by using brine. Potholes are appearing like magic in the asphalt in the Toledo area.

[ROCKMAN]

First: brine vs. salt. Brine is water with salt dissolved in it. Spread salt on ice and ice melts to produce water with salt = brine. Thus brine and salt will produce the same corrosion problems because they are the same thing.

Salt water producing well: because of the need for a larger diameter well bore to produce high volumes you run bigger casing. Bigger csg = higher cost. Huge salt water volumes require expensive chrome steel including the csg and all other components. Also many oil/NG will reservoirs will flow naturally at least initially. Rare to find a salt water reservoir that would. So a significant lift system would be required. And that lift would use a significant amount of energy to move a large volume of brine. So now you can get the brine to the surface...now what do you do with it? Easy: build huge storage facilities to hold the brine until needed. Salt can be stored in a relatively cheap warehouse. If the well is to supply a large area you can't fill trucks up individually: would take too much time to be practical. Now you have to move the brine to the roads you need to de-ice. Tanks trucks are more expensive than dump trucks used to spread salt. And the brine filled tankers would deliver much less salt per mile than a dump truck would so they would need a lot more tankers. And the water component of the brine would weigh significantly more than the salt component. Thus more energy would be used through the process to move the water component which actually does nothing to eliminate the ice.

The one significant factor that might make well brine more practical is if the salt has to be shipped in from a long distance. So I would be surprised if well brine would be practical in most areas. Also, I understand that in PA the state takes oil field brine from the oil patch for free and uses it to de-ice. BTW spray oil field brine on Texas roads and you ass is grass and the Rail Road Commission would be the lawnmower. Violates our environmental regs. Another reason why I'm amazed by Yankee reaction to oil field waste when they intentionally dump millions of pounds of toxic salt into the environment here it can run off into streams and filter down to fresh ware aquifers.

[Tanada]

First: brine vs. salt. Brine is water with salt dissolved in it. Spread salt on ice and ice melts to produce water with salt = brine. Thus brine and salt will produce the same corrosion problems because they are the same thing.

Salt water producing well: because of the need for a larger diameter well bore to produce high volumes you run bigger casing. Bigger csg = higher cost. Huge salt water volumes require expensive chrome steel including the csg and all other components. Also many oil/NG will reservoirs will flow naturally at least initially. Rare to find a salt water reservoir that would. So a significant lift system would be required. And that lift would use a significant amount of energy to move a large volume of brine. So now you can get the brine to the surface...now what do you do with it? Easy: build huge storage facilities to hold the brine until needed. Salt can be stored in a relatively cheap warehouse. If the well is to supply a large area you can't fill trucks up individually: would take too much time to be practical. Now you have to move the brine to the roads you need to de-ice. Tanks trucks are more expensive than dump trucks used to spread salt. And the brine filled tankers would deliver much less salt per mile than a dump truck would so they would need a lot more tankers. And the water component of the brine would weigh significantly more than the salt component. Thus more energy would be used through the process to move the water component which actually does nothing to eliminate the ice.

The one significant factor that might make well brine more practical is if the salt has to be shipped in from a long distance. So I would be surprised if well brine would be practical in most areas. Also, I understand that in PA the state takes oil field brine from the oil patch for free and uses it to de-ice. BTW spray oil field brine on Texas roads and you ass is grass and the Rail Road Commission would be the lawnmower. Violates our environmental regs. Another reason why I'm amazed by Yankee reaction to oil field waste when they intentionally dump millions of pounds of toxic salt into the environment here it can run off into streams and filter down to fresh ware aquifers.

Uhm, Rockman, I am not talking about buying new brine spraying trucks, our county and state government in Northern Ohio ALREADY bought the brine spraying equipment and is using it every time the forecast says snow is going to be falling on the roads. Right now they are using both systems, Brine spraying before snow falls and wet rock salt scattering when snow fall exceeds what the brine pretreatment can melt. The sodium chloride rock salt is frequently wetted down with calcium chloride brine to make it stick to the roads better when it is about to be loaded on the plow trucks. My question is more or less, wouldn't it be safer to use natural deep water brine instead of frack fluid brine with a bunch of odd chemicals in it.

[ROCKMAN]

I thought the question dealt with the economics of producing brine from wells. As far as using salty frac fluids that's a moot question: I'm aware of no state that allows dumping frac fluids on the ground.

[Keith_McClary]

The Salt Institute ("EVERYTHING'S BETTER WITH A LITTLE SALT", "How Adding Iodine to Salt Boosted Americans’ IQ") has stated that applying brine before snow or ice has bonded to the pavement can be ten times more effective than spreading granular salt on top of snow and ice after the precipitation has bonded to the pavement. It takes one ton of salt to make 1,000 gallons of brine, resulting in less granular salt usage. Since pre-treating with brine makes subsequent applications of salt work more efficiently, twice as much can be accomplished with the same amount of salt.

Considering the source, you may take that with a grain of ...

[vtsnowedin]

As someone that has actually done skid testing to test the effectiveness of salt substitutes and pretreatment with brine I have a very clear opinion of this.
It is stupid!!! And a waste of money.
Consider your truck loaded with 4000 gallons of brine (a full 20 ton load) from the Salt institute post above you see that that load only has four tons of salt in it. On a real storm you need 500 lbs of salt per two lane mile so that load will treat sixteen miles effectively. The same truck with a spreader carrying twenty tons of dry or pre wetted salt can treat eighty miles of road letting mother nature deliver the water then switch to sand if desired. You can't put sand through a tank and pump.
What DOT is so caught up on their road repairs that they can afford two fleets of trucks, one to pre treat with brine and another to plow and salt mid storm?

[ROCKMAN]

vt - Thanks. And once again the wide range of experiences present on this site pays off.

[Subjectivist]

We use two fleets of trucks here now, which adds a lot to the cost. I have yet to see a brine truck in action spraying so I could be wrong, in my old job I saw advertisements for removable spray tanks designed to strap into the box on a dump truck. If the state and county bought those kind of dual use trucks it isn't as bad. However as vt said, it seems like an awful lot of money for very little effective benefit. That is why I am curious about brine water extraction wells, they would do two things IMO. First they would save all the effort that goes into the mixing of the salt water brine solution out of rock salt, I am sure it is more complicated than just running water through a salt pile and capturing the resulting brine. Secondly it would save a lot of fresh water that is currently used to make the brine because you would be consuming water nobody wants to drink or irrigate with.

Just think of all the extra labor and manpower needed to set up the brine trucks and spray the 8 mile out an back loop they can do instead of the 40 mile loop out and back a salt truck can do. Even if the brine were twice as efficent as rock salt in melting snow so you could halve the application rate you would get less than half as many miles done with one truck load.

It all makes one wonder how the brine spray advocates were able to convince so many counties to switch over...or did the Federal Highway Administration make it the standard for federally funded roads? If that happened then they had to buy the equipment just to get their federal funding.

[ROCKMAN]

And again I'll point out that a well drilled and designed to produce a large volume of brine would be very expensive. And if a small number of wells are drilled then they'll have to build numerous large storage facilities to hold the reserves until needed. And then perhaps haul the brine hundreds of miles to where it is needed or at least build a lot of storage tanks across the entire region. But the brine would still have to be hauled to those facilities from the wells.

The cost and efficiency of the spraying is only half the story...at best

[Subjectivist]

And again I'll point out that a well drilled and designed to produce a large volume of brine would be very expensive. And if a small number of wells are drilled then they'll have to build numerous large storage facilities to hold the reserves until needed. And then perhaps haul the brine hundreds of miles to where it is needed or at least build a lot of storage tanks across the entire region. But the brine would still have to be hauled to those facilities from the wells.

The cost and efficiency of the spraying is only half the story...at best

Looking around the internet this morning I found a lot of references to using produced brine from oil and gas wells as road brine, a kind of value added byproduct. Apparently in the Buffalo region of New York the conventional natural gas wells produce enough brine with the gas to make using it on the roads a profitable side business. The more I learn about the fossil fuel industry the more little side paths I end up going down. I remember you posting a while back that doing that in Texas is a major offense, but up in the great snowy north standards are very different. I also learned that in Michigan the state regulates the quality of the produced brine that can be used on the roads. I can't find the Ohio regulation, it seems to be on a county by county basis instead of state wide.

[ROCKMAN]

sub - I knew PA used oil field brines. Interesting to see that it's not uncommon. Getting free salt water would certainly help the economics. Funny how in Texas you hear few complaining about frac'ng but up north a very different story. And yet up north they'll dump oil field brines on the roads and I've had to actually spend $millions over the last 38 years disposing of those same fluids down deep wells. And forget brine...think rainwater. In La. when I'm drilling in a wet lands area I have to put a ring dike around my drill site. Of course when it rains the dike keeps the water on the drill site. Get enough rain and it flood the site. So all I need do is pump it over the dike. Right...just rain water. WRONG...it's illegal for me to pump rain water off my location. I have to pay for trucks to haul it to certified disposal locations.

Rain...think what La. would do to me if they caught me dumping brine on a road. LOL

[Subjectivist]

I don't see how brine water can melt snow? All the salt ions available to dissolve in the still-frozen water are already taken up by the water you apply?

The brine water they make from rock salt is suppossed to be 32% sodium chloride by weight, the produced water that is sold south of here in Ohio is about 28% salt but it is a mixture of calcium, sodium, magnesium and potassium chlorides that stays liquid down to about -15F. For the stuff the county makes out of rock salt it is liquid down to 5F but as it melts snow and ice it absorbs the water and becomes less and less concentrated and the freezing temperature goes up. Sea water is a little under 3.8% salt and it freezes around 28F.

Straight rock salt spread on the roads clears ice and snow down to about 20F, below that regular salt gets diluted too fast to be effective. The theory behind the brine is they spray it the day before the snow and it dries on the paving as powder crystalline salt taking up all the pore spaces in the paving and preventing ice and snow from adhering. I am not sure I buy into the theory, but that is the logic the county road crews use to justify using brine spray.

http://www.ohio.com/blogs/drilling/ohio ... t-1.443914

Duck Creek Energy, based in Brecksville, Ohio, created AquaSalina™ in 2003 and received approval for its use as a deicer and dust suppressant from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources in 2004. The liquid deicer and dust suppressant, AquaSalina™ is natural seawater that is a byproduct of oil and gas well production processed to clean water standards except for the salt content into a new commodity and is used by snow removal contractors and municipalities in Ohio. Applying AquaSalina™ to rock salt reduces salt used and chloride run off into our lakes and streams.
In early 2012, Duck Creek brought the defamation suit against Tish O’Dell and Michelle Aini, who are also members of a group that oppose oil and gas drilling, because they described AquaSalina™ as frac water and frac waste. The case was settled in September 2013 with the defendants agreeing to an injunction preventing them from further defaming Duck Creek Energy and also paying the company damages. The defendants are prohibited from referring to AquaSalina™ as fracwater, fracking waste, frack waste, fracking fluid, fracking by-product, toxic, carcinogenic, cancer causing, poisonous or radioactive or any synonym thereof.
“I felt it was crucial to stand up for the oil and gas industry and hold these individuals accountable for making defamatory statements about our product,” said David I. Mansbery, president of Duck Creek. “The defendant’s malicious statement that AquaSalina™ is “frac water” was completely untrue and in fact the product they defamed is environmentally-friendly and use of the product actually gives benefits to the environment rather than harming it by reducing the rock salt and chlorides applied to roadways by up to 40 percent. The very environment some individuals claim to protect is harmed by their misguided actions.”

My question starting this thread is, if this stuff is so useful to produce as a side line of oil and gas production why not skip all the headaches from the oil and gas and drill directly for the purpose of producing the saline water? Rockman argues it is too corrosive/expensive and he is the expert, but Duck Creek Energy delivers their Aquasalina to customers in my county for $0.409/gal and we are about 200 miles from the source.

ODOT makes their own rocksalt water brine for $0.04/gal but when its really cold they buy liquid calcium chloride brine and it runs $0.20 to $0.60/gal based on todays Toledo Blade newspaper.

The Bowling Green district, which covers Fulton, Lucas, Wood, Ottawa, Williams, Henry, Seneca, and Sandusky counties, spent just less than $2 million on snow and ice control last winter.

ODOT's local snow-and-ice tab was $3 million in 1999-2000 and $3.8 million in 2000-2001, but last winter was unusually mild. It was on course to post a historically low snowfall total in northwest Ohio before a late March storm brought more than nine inches to Toledo.

Drivers at the Fulton County garage near here predicted yesterday that Mother Nature will be meaner during the coming season.

“We're going to get a couple storms, at least,” said Jim Lucas of Wauseon. “We're due for one with a lot of wind.”

“It's got to catch up one of these years,” agreed Ray Sugg, also of Wauseon.

During this week's preseason equipment inspections, Dennis Boyle, the district equipment supervisor, is touring the maintenance garages and selecting trucks at random for checkups. Garage staff have been given a month to catch up on maintenance, he said, “and we're making sure everything's operational.”

Roads treated with salt brine are easy to spot: the sprayed solution leaves parallel white lines on the pavement. Even without any winter storms, ODOT crews have used it this season on certain bridges where overnight frost is known to cause ice problems, Mr. Rutherford said.

Salt brine costs about 4 cents a gallon, and ODOT mixes it itself “so we don't have to wait for a supply,” the spokesman said. The best-known liquid ice-fighting alternatives, calcium chloride and Ice Ban, a magnesium chloride product, cost 20 cents and 60 cents per gallon, respectively, he said.


Read more at http://www.toledoblade.com/frontpage/20 ... s2BiVOD.99

[Surf]

IIs there a brine aquifer with a high enough concentration to available? If there is is it big enough to do the job for many years. Yes you can drill for it . But if a brine aquifer is not readily known, You would have to do spend money for a survey. if one is found you would have to spend money to drill the well. In fact you may have to drill several wells before you find one with enough flow to be useable. So the upfront cost for the survey and wells would be very high compared to just buying a waste product or by buying rock salt and then mixing it with water.

[Synapsid]

Brine question:

I seem to recall that sulfur has been removed from where it caps salt domes by pumping down hot water to dissolve it and then pumping the solution back up. The question that comes to mind is: could you pump hot water into a salt dome and pump out the brine? It would be a lot cheaper than exploring for brines, as we know where there are a lot of salt domes.

There's still the problem of corrosivity, though, so the idea might be impractical. But then, I think using salt on roads is a bad idea to begin with, so why am I writing th...?

Oops.

I blame the tawny port. I'm normally much clearer-thinking, really I am.

[Synapsid]

pstarr,

LOTS of them along the Gulf Coast, yes, but you find them in Utah, for instance, and lots of Palaeozoic salt in the Midwest too (salt mines!) that could be flooded, perhaps. Still, it's probably not the best idea I ever came up with.

[Tanada]

Aren't salt domes down Louisiana way where they don't need road salt?

Detroit, Michigan and Windsor Ontario have some of the biggest salt mines around under them, the formation goes from mid Michigan almost to Niagara Falls in New York through Ontario, Canada. The problem with pumping water in and pumping brine out is you create a cave in the salt formation and eventually the cave becomes large enough that it can't support the weight of the area above and creates a big nasty sink hole. I suppose if you put your well out miles away from homes or farms you could get away with it because property damage would be less, but spots like that are kind of rare in the part of Michigan and Ontario where the salt formation is under the ground and you certainly don't want to drill under Lake Erie or lake Ontario. Salt layers are located wherever old seas used to exist so basically everything from Minnesota down to the GOM through the center of the country has a salt layer buried under it from the ancient sea. Much of it is too thin to bother with but I know there is at least one BIG salt mine in Kansas where the formation formed a dome. My understanding is Halite (crystalline rock salt) is very plastic just like glacial ice and where it finds a weak spot above it protrudes upward. The pressure of the mass of the rock and soil surrounding the weak spot compresses the halite and it squeezes like tooth paste into the weak spot from all sides making the dome taller and broader in the process.