Click here to receive the Skimming Material Test Kit which includes belt and tube sample materials that you can use to test their effectiveness at your location. Will your oil pick up? Find out today!

Oil Skimmers are an environmentally sound choice for the removal of oil from fracking wastewater. Fracking, also known as hydraulic fracturing, is a procedure widely used by natural gas drillers in which water, sand and chemicals are forced at high pressure into the ground to break up shale rock formations, thereby causing the discharge of trapped natural gas. The process of hydraulic fracturing is not new. It has been around for more than 60 years and has been used on more than 1 million producing wells.

A typical fracture treatment normally consists of 98.0-99.5 percent water and sand while the balance is made up of chemical additives that depend on the components of the water and the shale formation being fractured. In order to fracture one producing well, millions of gallons of water are used. There has been growing concern with the disposition of the 20-40 percent of flowback that picks up other contaminants as it returns to the surface.

A fracking site.

Abanaki's oil skimmers provide an environmentally responsible way for wastewater treatment plant operators and their natural gas driller customers to remove trace amounts of oil from fracking wastewater prior to its disposal. Oil skimmers work by making use of the differences in specific gravity and surface tension between oil and water. These physical characteristics allow the belts to attract oil and other floating hydrocarbon liquids from the surface of the fracking wastewater. The contaminants are then scraped off the sides of the belt and discharged into a collection container. Abanaki belt oil skimmers can be used in applications as deep as 100 feet and can be operated 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. An oil skimmer requires very little oversight, no maintenance, and is very cost effective due to low energy requirements.

For more information on how our oil skimmers and belts can be the environmentally safe choice in any fracking application, click the photo above.