Center for Excellence in Produced
Water Management

Our Mission

To develop and implement environmentally sustainable and economically fruitful water resource recovery programs for industrial and municipal wastewaters.

Collaboration

Breakthroughs

Impact

Areas of Research

The Center for Excellence in Produced Water Management (CEPWM) provides innovative science and engineering research for application in the oil and gas industry for the purposes of reducing environmental impacts, improving industry process efficiencies, increasing profitability, and enhancing society benefits.

We do this with a concentration on three key areas:

Treatment technology development and evaluation

We help companies develop technologies, and provide baseline data on how those technologies perform. 

Resource extraction and exploitation

Produced waters contain a myriad of valuable resources, such as minerals, precious metals, and rare earth elements.

Produced water economics and beneficial reuse

The mission of our research is to determine the cost points where water reuse is a viable option.

Our Projects

Membrane Technology Development for Desalination and Organics Removal

Water Sampling Program

Initiate a produced water-sampling program and develop an online database of water quality parameters.

Nanocomposite Membranes

Synthesize next-generation nanocomposite membranes for thermally driven desalination processes.

Resource Potential and Techno-Economic Assessment of Rare Earth Element (REE) recovery from Oil Field Brines

Our mission is to develop schemes and technologies to extract these resources, or to concentrate them into forms that can be refined, in economically viable manners.

Demonstration Facility

Design a demonstration facility to validate and assess resource recovery technology(s) that have demonstrated promise in bench-scale evaluations.

Benefits

Characterize benefits of increase in drinking water inflow associated with average amount of produced water.

Leadership

We are a team of scientists, engineers, innovators, and educators who have joined together to create synergies across multiple areas of produced water management. Collectively, we represent 100+ years of experience across our respective areas of expertise.

Dr. Jonathan Brant

Director & Research Lead

Dr. William Bellamy

Deputy Director & Research Lead

Dr. Charles Mason

Research Lead

Partnering with the Organizations of today to Develop the Technologies of Tomorrow