Browsing by Author "Tong, Tiezheng, advisor"

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Open Access
Elucidating the mechanisms and developing mitigation strategies of mineral scaling in membrane desalination
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Yin, Yiming, author; Tong, Tiezheng, advisor; Sharvelle, Sybil, committee member; Carlson, Kenneth, committee member; Li, Yan, committee member
Mineral scaling in membrane desalination, which is referred to as the accumulation of minerals on the membrane surface, has been considered as the primary constraint that limits the water recovery and efficiency of membrane desalination significantly. The occurrence of mineral scaling results in the decrease of water flux and compromises the lifetime of membrane materials, leading to increased needs of energy consumption and facility maintenance. Furthermore, the limited water recovery of membrane desalination due to mineral scaling also results in the production of high volumes of concentrated brines, which may require thermal-based technologies to further reduce the brine volume to achieve minimal liquid discharge (MLD) or zero liquid discharge (ZLD). However, these technologies are energy- and cost-intensive. Therefore, developing feasible and effective strategies to mitigate mineral scaling in membrane desalination is urgently needed to improve the resilience and performance of desalination systems, which will ultimately facilitate the implementation of desalination to mitigate global water scarcity and reduce the environmental risks and cost associated with brine management. Gaining a fundamental understanding of mineral scaling mechanisms and the relationship between scaling behaviors and membrane surface properties are the key prerequisites to the rational design of scaling mitigation strategies in membrane desalination. First, I dedicated efforts to elucidate the scaling mechanism of silica in membrane distillation (MD), a hybrid thermal-membrane desalination technology. Three PVDF membranes with different surface wettability were used to unveil underlying scaling mechanisms of silica in MD. The experimental results revealed that homogeneous nucleation played an important role in inducing silica scaling in MD, while heterogeneous nucleation facilitated the formation of silica scaling layer on the membrane surface. Additionally, I demonstrated that tuning membrane surface wettability was insufficient to reduce silica scaling in MD. Next, I investigated the effect of membrane surface wettability on the scaling kinetics and reversibility of gypsum scaling and silica scaling in MD. Unlike the formation of silica that is regulated by polymerization reactions, the formation of gypsum is governed by crystallization reactions between Ca2+ and SO42- ions. In this work, I demonstrated that superhydrophobic membrane was able to delay the induction time of gypsum scaling and enhanced scaling reversibility, which resulted in increased total water recovery. However, this strategy was not effective to mitigate silica scaling. Such distinct experimental observations between gypsum scaling and silica scaling were attributed to their different formation mechanisms and corresponding interactions with membrane surfaces. Further, in addition to the development of novel membrane materials to resist scaling, the use of anti-scalants to mitigate gypsum scaling and silica scaling was also explored in MD. Although the use of anti-scalants has been widely adopted in the industry, the effectiveness of anti-scalants and the underlying factors that control the anti-scaling efficiency have not been systematically studied. Three anti-scalants with different functional groups were used to elucidate the efficiencies of anti-scalants in mitigating gypsum scaling and silica scaling in MD. Poly(acrylic) acid and poly(ethylenimine), which were enriched with carboxyl and amino groups, were shown to be effective to inhibit gypsum scaling and silica scaling, respectively. The mitigating effect of poly(acrylic) acid molecules on gypsum scaling was due to their effects of stabilizing scaling precursors, whereas poly(ethylenimine) facilitated silica polymerization and altered the morphology of silica scale layer on the membrane surface. This work indicates that anti-scalants with different functional groups are needed for different mineral scaling types. Finally, I compared the efficiencies of membrane surface modification and anti-scalants in mitigating mineral scaling in membrane desalination. The efficiencies of four types of membrane surface modification in mitigating gypsum scaling in reverse osmosis (RO) were compared with the use of anti-scalant poly(acrylic) acid. It was shown that membrane surface modification was only able to reduce the water flux decline caused by gypsum scaling moderately, whereas the use of anti-scalants greatly inhibited gypsum scaling. In addition, I also demonstrated that the use of anti-scalants was highly efficient in preventing gypsum scaling in a combined RO-MD treatment train, which dramatically increased the total water recovery. Therefore, a comparative insight on the efficiencies of different scaling mitigation strategies was provided, which has the potential to guide the selection of the most appropriate strategy to mitigate mineral scaling in membrane desalination.
Open Access
Elucidating the performance and mechanisms of membrane separation: the use of artificial intelligence and a case study of produced water treatment
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Jeong, Nohyeong, author; Tong, Tiezheng, advisor; Carlson, Kenneth, committee member; Sharvelle, Sybil, committee member; Bandhauer, Todd, committee member
Pressure-driven membrane technologies such as nanoﬁltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO) have been widely used in water and wastewater treatment because of their effective removal of contaminants and exceptional energy efficiencies. The performance of NF and RO membranes is regulated by the well-documented permeability-selectivity tradeoff, in which an increase of membrane permeability typically occurs at the expense of membrane selectivity and vice versa. To break the upper bound of this tradeoff and further enhance the efficiency of NF and RO treatment, a mechanistic understanding of the solute transport across membranes with pore sizes at the nanometer- or angstrom-scale is required. Current theoretical models relating to solute transport across membranes are limited as the models require precise acquisition of multiple parameters. Machine learning (ML) models, a data-driven approach, have been applied to predict membrane performance and elucidate the membrane separation mechanisms. However, whether the ML models possess appropriate knowledge on membrane separation mechanisms has not yet been studied. Probing knowledge of ML models on membrane separation mechanisms can enhance the reliability of the ML model, which is of great importance to the implementation of ML models for decision-making processes, such as membrane design and selection. Moreover, contrary to the well-controlled experiments for studying the mechanisms or models associated with solute transport, where a limited number of defined solutes are present, membrane treatment has been used to treat wastewater containing diverse organic and inorganic compounds. Thus, along with fundamental research on predictive ML models for membrane performance, investigating the performance of membranes for treating wastewater with complex compositions is also valuable to provide knowledge of solute transport across membranes in practical applications. In this thesis, I present both a fundamental study of probing solute transport across NF and RO membranes using ML models and an applied study that explores membrane treatment of unconventional oil and gas (UOG) produced water. First, the reliability of the ML model as a tool to predict membrane performance was investigated. Specifically, the influence of data leakage on the ML model performance, as well as the solution to prevent this issue, was explored to evaluate the prediction capability of the ML model objectively. I discovered that data leakage can lead to falsely high prediction accuracy of the ML model, and appropriate data splitting for the training, validation, and testing dataset is necessary to avoid data leakage. Second, the underlying knowledge of ML models for organic and inorganic solute transport across polyamide membranes was investigated by using a model interpretation method (i.e., Shapley additive explanation, SHAP). I not only tested whether ML models are able to possess adequate knowledge on solute transport, but also utilized the SHAP method to reveal solute transport mechanisms that are typically obtained using tedious, well-controlled experiments. For the ML model applied to predicting the rejection of organic constituents by NF and RO membranes, I found that the ML model had proper knowledge of size exclusion, but its understanding of electrostatic interaction and adsorption remains rudimentary. By using ML to predict the rejection of inorganic constituents, I elucidated that explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) can capture the major governing mechanisms of ion/salt transport across polyamide membranes (i.e., size exclusion and electrostatic interaction), which have different importance for the transport of single salt, cation, anion transport in mixture salt solution. Lastly, the performance of RO/NF membranes for the treatment of UOG produced water was explored as a case study, which comprehensively investigated the chemical composition and toxicity level of the treated water. NF permeates, which still had high salinities and high boron concentrations, were found to be inappropriate for irrigation and livestock drinking water, while RO membranes effectively removed most pollutants and met most water quality standards for beneficial reuse (i.e., irrigation and livestock drinking water). However, the chloride concentrations and sodium adsorption ratio (SAR) values of RO permeates were still higher than the recommended thresholds for irrigation. Also, surfactants with molecular weights higher than the molecular weight cut-off of RO/NF membranes were able to traverse through the membrane, indicating that NF and RO are not complete barriers against organic contaminants. The toxicity test results of NF and RO permeates demonstrated that NF permeates were still toxic to Daphnia, while RO permeates showed less toxicity than NF permeates or no toxicity. The toxicity level of NF and RO permeates showed a correlation with salinity in the permeates, which might be the main driver of the toxicity. I envision that my thesis provides a framework to evaluate the knowledge and reliability of ML model predictions, while presenting a comprehensive investigation on membrane performance and the potential risks associated with membrane treatment of UOG produced water for beneficial reuse. The knowledge gained in this thesis improves our capability for rational membrane material design and selection, which has the potential to lead to more efficient NF and RO technologies for sustainable water and wastewater treatment.
Open Access
Membrane treatment of wastewater from oil and gas production: motivations and material innovation
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Du, Xuewei, author; Tong, Tiezheng, advisor; Carlson, Kenneth, committee member; Sharvelle, Sybil, committee member; Kota, Arun Kumar, committee member
The rise of shale oil and gas (O&G) via hydraulic fracturing (HF) has boosted energy production in the United States. Further, many of the U.S. shale plays coincide with water-scarce areas that suffer from prolonged drought periodically. The substantial volumes of water consumption and wastewater generation associated with O&G activities intensify local water stress and create a challenge of wastewater management, rendering treatment and reuse of O&G wastewater an essential strategy to improve water sustainability of O&G-producing regions. Herein, the main goal of this dissertation is to facilitate the reuse and treatment of O&G wastewater in order to promote water sustainability of O&G-producing regions. To achieve this goal, two sets of studies were performed, which pertain to (1) data analysis to investigate the water footprint of O&G production under hydrodynamic variation; and (2) developing novel membrane materials for more efficient O&G wastewater treatment. First, I investigated the relationship of hydroclimate variation with the activities and water footprint of O&G production in Colorado, one of the major O&G producing states in the U.S. I discovered that hydroclimate variation imposes a negligible impact on well number and water footprint of O&G production. However, the intensive water consumption by HF under arid conditions could escalate competition for water resources at the local scale. Further, I expanded the research scope to estimate the water consumption by HF activities under different hydroclimate conditions in eleven O&G-producing states in the central and western U.S. from 2011 to 2020. The results show that the water consumption under abnormally dry or drought climates accounted for 49.7% (475.3 billion gallons) of total water usage of HF, with 9% (86.1 billion gallons) of water usage occurred under extreme or exceptional drought conditions. The water usage of HF under arid conditions can translate to high densities of water footprint at the local scale, equivalent to more than 50% of the annual water usage by the irrigation and domestic sectors in 21-47 and 11-51 counties (depending on the specific year), respectively. Such water stress imposed by O&G production, however, could be effectively mitigated by the reuse of flowback and produced water. This renders wastewater reuse necessary to maintain water sustainability of O&G-producing regions in the context of both a rising O&G industry and a changing climate. Second, I focused on developing novel membrane materials for the treatment of O&G wastewater by membrane distillation (MD), which is an emerging technology showing promise for efficient desalination of high salinity industrial wastewater. I investigated the impacts of membrane surface wettability on the treatment of O&G wastewaters by MD. From this study, omniphobic membranes with high wetting resistance showed more robust performance, but they also required the use of toxic long-chain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs, ≥ 8 fluorinated carbons) during fabrication process and displayed lower water productivity compared to conventional hydrophobic membranes. Then, I developed highly wetting-resistant MD membranes while avoiding the use of long-chain PFASs, which is essential to improve the viability of MD for resilient and sustainable MD desalination. I demonstrated that long-chain PFASs are not required when designing membranes with high wetting resistance. Instead, the combination of hierarchical texture and (ultra)short-chain fluorocarbons are able to create MD membranes with exceptional wetting resistance. Finally, I also elucidated the fundamental relationship between membrane wetting resistance and water vapor permeability in the MD process, which needs to be taken into consideration when designing and selecting appropriate membranes for effective MD treatment of O&G wastewater. I identified that a trade-off exists between wetting resistance and water vapor permeability of MD membranes, and also unveiled the mechanism of such a trade-off by revealing the importance of water-air interfacial area in regulating water vapor transport through microporous membranes. I envision that the novel insights on omniphobic membrane fabrication and the wetting resistance-vapor permeability trade-off will pave the way for more rational design of MD membranes for sustainable O&G wastewater treatment applications.
Open Access
Systematic analysis of beneficial reuse in unconventional oil and gas wastewater management
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Robbins, Cristian A., author; Tong, Tiezheng, advisor; Carlson, Kenneth, advisor; Sharvelle, Sybil, committee member; Bandhauer, Todd, committee member
Wastewater management within the unconventional oil and gas (UOG) sector has continued to grow in importance in correlation with the rising water footprint of hydraulic fracturing (HF). The predominant UOG wastewater management method in the U.S. is to dispose of the wastewater deep underground in geologically stable formations by deep-well injection (DWI). However, this method has been plagued with concerns such as induced seismicity and decreasing capacity for DWI in various UOG regions. Further, when the wastewater is disposed of via DWI this potential resource is no longer available for beneficial purposes. An alternative method to DWI is UOG wastewater treatment for beneficial reuse which repurposes the treated wastewater for end uses such as surface discharge. The main objective of this dissertation is to analyze key aspects of UOG wastewater management to include topics within technology, logistics, regulations, and economics in order to further facilitate increased wastewater treatment and beneficial reuse. At the core of UOG wastewater treatment and beneficial reuse is an advanced treatment technology that can effectively treat hypersaline and complex UOG wastewater. For my work, I focused on membrane distillation (MD), a hybrid thermal-membrane desalination process well-suited to treat UOG wastewater. An advantage of using MD is its inherent ability to use low grade waste heat as an energy source to power treatment. I investigated the availability and sufficiency of waste heat at the well-pad to power MD for on-site UOG wastewater treatment in Weld County, Colorado. Additionally, I also investigate the availability and sufficiency of natural gas at the well-pad to power MD. The analysis showed that well-pad waste heat is insufficient while natural gas is sufficient for long term on-site MD treatment. Next, the impact of logistics, specifically transportation distance and costs, was researched for DWI and centralized wastewater treatment (CWT) powered by natural gas compressor station (NGCS) waste heat. Unlike on-site treatment, wastewater needs to be transported for DWI or CWT and thus incurs a transportation cost. Using ArcGIS software, transportation distances and associated costs were analyzed for Weld County, Colorado at various scales. At the county scale, DWI was economically favored based on transportation, however, when the scale of operation was reduced for certain areas (i.e., county to local) the economic advantage shifted towards CWT. Additionally, NGCS waste heat for Weld County was quantified and the MD treatment demand was correlated to MD treatment capacity provided by NGCS waste heat for CWT. This analysis emphasized the importance of matching treatment demand with capacity provided by waste heat. Further, MD treatment of UOG wastewater has been constrained by surfactant-induced membrane pore wetting. Surfactants, commonly found in HF fluid, reduce the surface tension of membranes inducing wetting. We investigated two mitigation strategies, pretreatment via coagulation-adsorption and fabrication of omniphobic membranes. UOG wastewater sourced from the Denver-Julesburg Basin that induced exceptional wetting of a hydrophobic polyvinylidene fluoride membrane during MD treatment was used. Both strategies proved effective at mitigating surfactant-induced wetting, however, flux decline with the use of omniphobic membrane was unacceptable due to the effects of fouling thus hindering its viability. To better understand the surfactant composition in the UOG wastewater, ultrahigh pressure liquid chromatography (UHPLC) coupled with quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (QToF/MS) was implemented to identify surfactants in the UOG wastewater and qualify the effect of pretreatment in reducing surfactants. In the UOG wastewater, 192 surfactants were identified with 91 being reduced by full pretreatment. Finally, an in-depth perspective on the motivations and barriers to increased future treatment and beneficial reuse of UOG wastewater was provided. This analysis moved beyond technology, which receives the majority of research interest, to explore and better understand other non-treatment aspects. Four major barriers to beneficial reuse were identified which are technology, economics, regulations, and social. These barriers were clearly elucidated providing insight into ways to overcome them to facilitate increased beneficial reuse. A systems-level approach requiring broad collaborations across multiple disciplines pertaining to technology, policy, legislation, economics, and social science to shift UOG wastewater management towards treatment and beneficial reuse was proposed.
Open Access
Treatment of shale oil and gas produced water using membrane distillation combined with effective pretreatment
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Zhang, Zuoyou, author; Tong, Tiezheng, advisor; Carlson, Kenneth H., committee member; Zahran, Sammy J., committee member
Fossil energy is indispensable for society development. Shale oil and gas as unconventional energy resource plays an important role in improving the energy security of U.S. But the exploitation of shale oil and gas is accompanied by substantial freshwater consumption and wastewater generation. The wastewater generated from shale oil and gas production contains large amounts of salts, particles, and petroleum-associated pollutants, inevitably imposing harmful consequences to the ecological environment if not properly treated. Effective treatment of shale oil and gas wastewater, ideally for beneficial reuse, is essential in promoting sustainability of shale oil and gas production at the water-energy nexus. In this thesis, I am focusing on developing an integrated treatment train that enables effective treatment of shale oil and gas produced water. Membrane distillation (MD), an emerging membrane desalination technology, was performed in tandem with simple and inexpensive pretreatment steps, namely precipitative softening (PS) and walnut shell filtration (WSF). A laboratory-scale MD system was designed and built at Colorado State University, and produced water generated from the Wattenberg field in northeast Colorado was collected and treated by the PS-WSF-MD system. My results demonstrated that PS removed various particulate, organic, and inorganic foulants, and thus mitigate fouling and scaling potential of the produced water. WSF displayed exceptional efficiencies (≥95%) in eliminating volatile toxic compounds including benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene, and xylenes (BTEX) along with additional gasoline and diesel range organic contaminants. With pretreatment, the water vapor flux of MD decreased by only 10% at a total water recovery of 82.5%, with boron and total BTEX concentrations in the MD distillate meeting the regulatory requirements for irrigation and typical discharge limits, respectively. The use of pretreatment also led to robust membrane reusability within three consecutive treatment cycles, with MD water flux fully restored after physical membrane cleaning. The results of this thesis highlight the necessity of pretreatment prior to MD treatment of produced water and demonstrate the potential of the developed treatment train to achieve a cost-effective and on-site wastewater treatment system that improves the sustainability of the shale oil and gas industry. At last, an economic and technical assessment of MD-based wastewater treatment system was performed. The cost of the treatment system developed in this thesis was evaluated, and the results indicated that the cost of MD-based treatment system is around $0.29-$0.87/barrel. Further investigation is needed to validate the economic feasibility of MD-based treatment system when applied at full-scale in the oil and gas fields.
Open Access
Viability and sustainability of desalinating produced water in the oil and gas industry
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2025) Grauberger, Brandi M., author; Bandhauer, Todd M., advisor; Tong, Tiezheng, advisor; Sharvelle, Sybil, committee member; Quinn, Jason C., committee member
Unconventional oil and gas extraction consumes considerable amounts of water, with up to 11 million gallons of freshwater used for the fracturing of a single well. Millions of gallons can come back to the surface of a well as flowback and produced waters, which are collected and disposed of through deep well injection. Water reallocation and reduction of resource waste can be aided by treating produced water from these operations but is rarely practiced. In particular, treating produced water to zero-liquid-discharge allows for management of dry wastes and generates a clean water source as its only other product. Eliminating the disposal of brines from produced water management would eliminate the need for deep well injection, which has shown to be an unsustainable option for produced water management. A major barrier to produced water treatment is the cost and availability of energy for treatment. Other barriers arise from an incomplete understanding of the system. Specifically, environmental and social impacts of produced water treatment are not understood. For example, it is not known if the discharge of treated produced water will have a negative effect on drinking water supplies or flow of rivers and streams. Without solving these challenges, produced water will continue to be disposed into injection wells, wasting the potential to reduce freshwater consumption, and further threatening seismic stability and access to freshwater reserves in oil and gas producing regions. This work completes three major analyses to understand the potential of produced water desalination. First, the accessibility of waste heat from the oil and gas industry, which is limited due to spatial and temporal disparities in waste heat and produced water production, was quantified and compared to energy requirements for produced water treatment. The results show that there is potential for waste heat utilization by membrane distillation, a thermal-membrane desalination technology option, in the oil and gas industry for produced water desalination with appropriate waste heat storage system integrations. The next major evaluation is of the economic and environmental impacts for multiple zero liquid discharge desalination options. Economic results show that the existing technology of mechanical vapor compression is difficult to reliably challenge, in terms of cost. However, environmental emissions can be much improved when using waste heat as an energy source for desalination or when treating with electrodialytic crystallization. Finally, this work evaluates options for zero liquid discharge desalination in the oil and gas industry using a triple bottom line sustainability framework. This framework considers the economic, environmental, and social competitiveness of technologies in multiple stakeholder-preference scenarios, which weight the importance of the three categories in different ratios. Results show that the use of waste heat is paramount to the consideration of membrane distillation as a technology option in the oil and gas industry. Further results show that the comprehensive consideration of economic, environment, and social impacts provide context to overall fit of technology options in the oil and gas industry. More detail of each major objective of this work are shared in the following paragraphs. The use of waste heat has been proposed to reduce the energy footprint of membrane distillation for flowback and produced water treatment. However, its feasibility has not been fully understood for produced water treatment. Accordingly, the third chapter of this work performed systematic assessments through thermodynamic modelling of waste heat capture, storage, and transportation for decentralized produced water treatment at well pads located in the Denver-Julesburg Basin. A wide range of sensible, phase-change, and thermo-chemical storage materials were assessed for their effectiveness at the utilization of waste heat from on-site hydraulic fracturing engines and natural gas compressor stations, in order to overcome the temporal or spatial mismatch between waste heat availability and produced water generation. Results show that the type of storage material being used can have a high impact on the efficiency of waste heat utilization and the treatment capacity of membrane distillation. Sensible storage materials only utilize sensible heat capacities, while phase-change materials have improved performance because they are able to additionally store latent heat. However, sensible and phase-change storage materials lose 11–83% of heat due to conversion inefficiencies caused by their changing temperatures. Thermo-chemical materials, on the other hand, have the highest potential for use because they collect and release heat at constant temperatures. Three thermo-chemical storage materials (magnesium sulfate, magnesium chloride, and calcium sulfate) were identified as those with the best efficiencies due to their elevated discharge temperatures which reduce the energy consumption of membrane distillation. In addition, these materials have high volumetric energy storage density, which enables capture and transportation of waste heat from remote locations such as natural gas compressor stations to the well sites, yielding up to 70% reduction in transportation costs relative to moving produced water to centralized treatment facilities at natural gas compressor stations. The third chapter of this work demonstrates the importance of selecting appropriate energy storage material for leveraging low-grade thermal energy such as waste heat to power membrane distillation for decentralized wastewater treatment. With more certainty given in the possibility and logistics of using waste heat for the membrane distillation system in the oil and gas industry, further analysis was needed to evaluate new technologies with existing brine desalination technologies in terms of replacement potential. Four technologies were considered: mechanical vapor compression with a crystallizer, electrodialytic crystallization, membrane distillation with a crystallizer using electrical heating, and membrane distillation with a crystallizer using waste heat. The fourth chapter of this work evaluates the economic and environmental competitiveness of said technologies. Zero liquid discharge desalination has garnered considerable attention for its potential to mitigate the impact of water scarcity while minimizing environmental consequences associated with ill-managed brine wastes. In the fourth chapter of this work, the economic and environmental competitiveness of an electrodialytic crystallization system designed in recent works was evaluated. It was found that when compared to existing zero liquid discharge technologies, electrodialytic crystallization could compete economically with the potential to reduce costs of zero liquid discharge by over 60% in optimal conditions. However, this high economic competitiveness is not consistent in more conservative operating scenarios. Furthermore, electrodialytic crystallization has 42% lower global warming potential than existing technologies. Scenario and sensitivity assessments completed in this chapter identify the operating parameters of electrodialytic crystallization that greatly affect economic and environmental impacts. Most notably, improvements to the cost and performance of ion exchange membranes will provide the highest benefit to electrodialytic crystallization competitiveness. With appropriate concentration of future research on these high-impact areas, the economic and environmental viability of electrodialytic crystallization should continue to increase in the coming years and electrodialytic crystallization will compete with existing zero liquid discharge technologies to provide a low-cost, efficient, and low-impact replacement to existing technologies. This chapter also shows the limited viability of membrane distillation with a crystallizer in replacing existing zero liquid discharge technologies due to high costs. In either case of electrical heating or waste heat use for membrane distillation, energy costs or infrastructure costs stemming from high energy intensity of membrane distillation result in costs far exceeding those of existing technologies. Through economic and environmental analysis expand the understanding of the potential for technologies to reach industrial application, further analysis can be leveraged to evaluate the fit of technologies into specific applications based on multiple stakeholder perspectives of the system needs. In the fifth chapter of this work, technology options were qualitatively evaluated under a stakeholder-informed triple bottom line sustainability perspective Chapter 5 of this work evaluates proposed technical solutions to produced water desalination and considers the additional economic, environmental, and social barriers that exist within the oil and gas industrial system. The consideration of these three impact areas (i.e., economic, environmental, and social) are defined as the triple bottom line considerations. The drivers, pressures, states, impacts and responses framework, first developed by the European Environmental Agency and later updated by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, was used to support the work of chapter 5 by organizing broad system considerations collected from stakeholder-generated literature into an orderly and approachable list of system indicators to evaluate technology compatibility within the applied system. System indicators are quantified, and overall system compatibility scores are calculated based on a variety of stakeholder preference scenarios. The results show that, given current models, emerging technologies have the potential to compete with existing zero liquid discharge technologies when applied to the oil and gas industry for produced water desalination under applications where stakeholders have low economic preference. Careful consideration of stakeholder preferences is necessary because technologies rank differently based on weightings of economic, environmental, and social impact importance. In summary, through thermodynamic and system modeling, techno-economic analysis, life cycle assessments, and triple bottom line sustainability considerations, four zero liquid discharge desalination technology options for the oil and gas industry (i.e., mechanical vapor compression with a crystallizer, electrodialytic crystallization, membrane distillation with a crystallizer using electrical heating, and membrane distillation with a crystallizer using waste heat) were evaluated for the Denver-Julesburg Basin in Northern Colorado. Overall, development of ion exchange membranes with improved performance for electrodialytic crystallization and developments in lowering membrane distillation energy intensity will determine the future economic competitiveness of electrodialytic crystallization and membrane distillation, respectively, as desalination technology options over mechanical vapor compression. However, when evaluating triple bottom line sustainability, results show potential for applications where there is lower preference to economic performance. In such applications, electrodialytic crystallization and membrane distillation with a crystallizer using waste heat consistently compete with mechanical vapor compression-based systems. Further understanding of the applied system needs and stakeholder preferences will determine overall applicability of technologies into the system.