New Mexico Geological Society Annual Spring Meeting — Abstracts

A large amount of produced water (PW) generated from oil and gas extraction necessitates the treatment of PW for safe disposal or beneficial reuse. However, after the desalination process, there is still a high concentration of ammonia in the treated PW from the Permian Basin. This study focuses on removing the remnant ammonia by zeolite and recovering it for beneficial reuse. In both batch and column studies, sodium pre-treated zeolite reduced ammonia concentration from 24 mg/L to 0.1-1 mg/L, with an optimum ammonia adsorption capacity of 20.2 ± 0.6 mg/g. 10% NaCl was identified as the best zeolite regenerant among all tested regenerants. A 10% MgCl₂ solution could only remove 14% of the adsorbed NH₃-N from the zeolite. A 10% KCl regenerant could release 97% of adsorbed NH₃-N from zeolite. However, 10% KCl-regenerated zeolite lost 31% of its NH₃-N adsorption capacity after regeneration. Conversely, 10% NaCl-regenerated zeolite had a 12% increase in its adsorption capacity for NH₃-N. We also found that the initial pH of the regeneration solution did not significantly impact the regeneration capacity. The ammonia in the spent regenerant could be recovered further as a fertilizer.