Advanced Remediation Technologies
The Advanced Remediation Technologies Program portfolio carries out research that supports the development of technologies to reduce or eliminate environmental impacts associated with the production of fossil energy resources such as oil and natural gas. The program is currently focused on three areas:
Environmentally Prudent Stewardship (EPS)
Recognizing that oil and natural gas resource development will continue during the ongoing energy transition to cleaner fuels, research in this area is directed toward finding ways to reduce the risks of environmental impacts to air, water, and other sensitive receptors during exploration, well drilling, completion, and production operations. Research efforts include field laboratories where new technologies can be evaluated at large scales and data can be collected for scientific and engineering analysis to reduce the carbon footprint during the energy transition.
Water Management Technologies (WMT)
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) aim to ensure that American water is affordable, reliable, sustainable, and resilient for energy use. To support this vision, the program aspires to better characterize coal combustion residual wastewater that is associated with coal power plants for improved treatment and ancillary resource potential. The program also works to characterize, treat, and reduce the volume of produced water extracted from and subsequently disposed of during oil and natural gas production operations.
Gas hydrates, present in subsurface sediments located in arctic and deep-sea locations, are now recognized as a potentially important factor in global climate change, both historically and for the future. Research in this area is focused on improving our fundamental understanding of hydrate accumulations, the degassing of methane to the atmosphere due to global warming, and the potential impacts of extracting natural gas from hydrate-bearing sediments.