Question

Unit V Essay Please write an essay about pollution prevention in the dry cleaning and hydraulic fracturing industries. Include the following items: 1. one-paragraph introduction; 2. five-paragraph review of the Sinshelmer, Grout, Namkoong, Gottlieb, and Latif (2007) dry cleaning article, including an explanation of the common dry cleaning process using perchloroethylene (PCE), problems with PCE, and a review of options to PCE presented in the paper; 3. five-paragraph review (total—not five paragraphs for each article) of the Heywood (2012) article and the Chen, AlWadei, Kennedy, and Terry (2014) article on hydraulic fracturing, including environmental issues with hydraulic fracturing and the P2 solutions presented in each of the two articles (include the use of liquid carbon dioxide); 4. five-paragraph review of the Taylor, Carbonell, and Desimone (2010) article on using liquid carbon dioxide for P2, focusing on how liquid carbon dioxide can be used as a substitute in the dry cleaning industry and in the hydraulic fracturing industry; and a 5. two-paragraph summary to include your overall thoughts about P2 in the dry cleaning and hydraulic fracturing industries, and specifically whether liquid carbon dioxide is a reasonable, cost-effective, and environmentallyfriendly alternative to traditional methods. In order to access the resources below, you must first log into the myCSU Student Portal and access the Academic Search Complete database within the CSU Online Library. Use at least the following references: Chen, J., Al-Wadei, M. H., Kennedy, C. M., & Terry, P. D. (2014). Hydraulic fracturing: Paving the way for a sustainable future? Journal of Environmental and Public Health, 1-10. Heywood, P. (2012, April). Fracking safer and greener? TCE: The Chemical Engineer, 850, 42-45. MEE 6201, Advanced Pollution Prevention 5 Sinshelmer, P., Grout, C., Namkoong, A., Gottlieb, R., & Latif, A. (2007). The viability of professional wet cleaning as a pollution prevention alternative to perchloroethylene dry cleaning. Air and Waste Management Association, 57, 172-178. Taylor, D. K., Carbonell, R., & Desimone, J. M. (2010). Opportunities for pollution prevention and energy efficiency enabled by the carbon dioxide technology platform. Annual Review of Energy and the Environment, 25(1), 115-148.

Answer 1

There are abundant

reserves of it in North and South

America, Europe and Asia Pacific,

particularly in China. Witb the addition

of sbale gas reserves, the world's total

tecbnically recoverable natural gas

resources has been increased by around

40% according to

figures from tbe US Energy Information

Administration (EIA).

Furthermore, for electricity generation,

shale gas has a lower CO2 output than oil so

could make a major contribution to curbing

global warming.

However a major drawback to shale gas

is that tbe hydraulic fracturing or 'fracking'

technology used in its production is

regarded as a serious potential threat to the

environment and to human health.

If shale gas is to realise its potential as a

source of energy, hydraulic fracturing, wbicb

with horizontal drilling is used to create

fissures in very tight shale rock to extract

natural gas, will have to be made safer. Or

environmentally-safer alternatives will have

to be developed and widely commercialised.

Another option is for the authorities and

the gas industry to win the trust of a sceptical

public by keeping the risks from hydraulic

firacturing well under control tbrough close

monitoring and the introduction of best

practices.

In tbe US where currently the vast

majority of the world's shale is produced

commercially, large sections of tbe

population, particularly in areas of shale

gas plays or operations, lack confidence

in the safety of fracking. This has triggered

campaigns for much stricter regulation

and controls combined with greater

transparency about tbe dangers of fracking

chemicals.

Around 30-40% of shale gas resources

in the US are in tbe giant Marcellus Shale

which lies underneath the country's

relatively densely populated north eastern

states.

In Europe, even before shale gas has been

produced in commercial quantities, fi'acking

has been banned in France and Bulgaria. towards trust

Fracking systems which are either safer

or are more trusted by the general public

are likely to emerge in the US, which first

developed the combination of horizontal

drilling and hydraulic fracturing currently

driving tbe shale gas boom in tbe country.

The US has by far the most experience in

handling the risks from hydraulic fracturing,

in particular the creation and operation of

a regulatory and supervisory framework for

managing sbale gas production.

The first techniques used to fracture shale rocks in the US were explosives like

nitroglycerine and napalm gel. Then tbe

first hydraulic fracturing methods using

water with gels and foams were introduced.

The 'shale gas rush' began in the US in

the late 1990s with the development of

horizontal or directional drilling

enabled a drilling bit to be turned 90°

several thousand feet underground. It

can then continue to be drilled for a few

thousand feet within a sbale rock formation

parallel to the ground surface.

In combination witb a new fracking

technology, called slickwater fracturing,

which employs much greater quantities of

water with surfactants and other kinds of

friction inhibitors, a series of branch-type

fissures are created along the horizontal

well.

To make the fractures, water, proppants,

usually comprising sand, and chemical

additives are pumped at high pressure

down the well. Tbe pressure is then reduced

so that much of tbe water, called tbe

flowback, travels back to tbe surface with

the proppants or sand grains left to keep the

fissures open to allow the gas to escape into

tbe well.

A typical fracturing fluid would consist

predominantly of water with the chemical

ingredients amounting to less tban 2%.

But this is sufficient, given the number and

scale of operations for large quantities of

chemicals to be used for fracking in US

shale gas production.

In addition to surfactants and friction

reducers, fracturing fluids contain solvents,

scale inbibitors, gelling agents, cross linkers,

corrosion inhibitors and clay stabilisers.

There are also acids for removing cement

and drilling mud from well casings,

viscosity breakers, biocides and buffers for

adjusting pH levels in the fluid.

In a typical shale gas well tbe number of

chemicals in the fracturing fluid can vary

from only a few to a variety with different

functions. demystifying fracking

fluids

In a minority report on hydraulic fracturing

publisbed last year, members of the energy

and commerce committee of the US House

of Representatives said that in 2005-2009

over 2,500 fracking products containing

around 750 chemicals were used by 14

oil and gas service companies. Altogether

these companies used 780m gallons of

hydraulic fracturing products.

Some of the chemicals were relatively

harmless, such as salt and citric acid, while

a few were highly unusual such as instant

coffee and walnut hulls. Some were

extremely toxic, such as benzene and lead," The US has by far the most

experience in handling

the risks from fracking, in

particular in creating and

operating a regulatory and

supervisory framework

for managing shale gas

production.

The most widely used was methanol,

contained in 342 fracking products, isopropyl

alcohol in 274, 2-butoxyethanol in 126 and

ethylene glycol in 119.

In an environmental impact report

issued late last year on planned shale gas

production from the Marcellus Shale in

western New York state, the environmental

conservation department of the state's

government Usted around 350 chemicals

which would be used or provided by

six service companies and 15 chemical

suppliers for fracturing fluids.

Among these chemicals, the report

pinpointed several categories with

potential adverse effects to human health.

These included petroleum distillates,

aromatic hydrocarbons, aldehydes, such as

formaldehyde, amides like acrylamide and

certain surfactants such as 1,4-dioxane.

Among critics in the US of existing controls

on shale gas production, a major grievance

is a decision by Congress in 2005 to exempt

hydraulic fracturing fluids and their

additives from the Safe Drinking Water Act

(SDWA), the main clean water legislation at

the federal level. The only exception is the

use of diesel fuel for fracking.

The Member of the House of

Representatives' Committee reported that

29 chemicals in fracturing products were

known possible human carcinogens and

classified as hazardous air pollutants under

the Clean Air Act or regulated under the

SDWA, except when applied in fracking

fluids. These chemicals were components of

650 fracking products or around a quarter of

tbe total recorded by the committee.

The oil and gas industry should be required to comply with the same

environmental safeguards as any other

industry, senior policy analyst

for the National Resources Defense Council

(NRDC), told a recent forum on fracking

organised by Yale University. Right now,

it's not and that's putting people and

communities at risk

Another big complaint among antifracking campaigners is the way fracturing &

additive producers are able to exercise their

legal right to trade secrecy to keep details of

their chemicals confidential.

Under US law, trade secrecy applies to

any commercial information which gives a

person & an opportunity to obtain advantage

over competitors who do not know or

use it'!

The Members of the House of

Representatives Committee estimated

that with 279 fracking products with one

or more chemicals, manufacturers were

claiming a proprietary or trade secret.

In most cases in which the committee

asked for information on of these

proprietary products they were told by the

shale gas companies giving evidence that

they themselves did not have access to

it because they had bought the products

'off the shelf from chemical suppliers. In

these cases, the companies are injecting

fluids containing chemicals that they

themselves cannot identify, said the

committee members.

The New York state's envirormiental conservation department complained that

with & a significant number& of fracking

products it was notified about by wellservice companies and chemical suppliers,

it was not able to link products with specific

chemicals because of the trade secrecy

protection. Consequently the state's

government was unable to put together

compound-specific toxicity data on many

fracking chemicals.

& In particular there is little meaningful

information one way or the other about

the potential impact on human health

of chronic low level exposures to many

of these chemicals as could occur if an

aquifer were contaminated as a result of a

spill or release that is undetected and/or

unremediated, the department said.

Greater openness and transparency

among shale gas operators and their

services and chemical suppliers is seen

by both environmental and public health

campaigners and officials as being one way

of improving the safety of fracking.