A University of Wyoming School of Energy Resources’s pilot project tackling the large quantities of water produced by oil and gas wells by adequately treating it so it can be used for generating hydrogen. The pilot project will be deployed at Williams Echo Springs gas plant, in Wamsutter, Wyoming.

Steam methane reforming is a well-established technology to produce hydrogen, requiring methane and clean water. The team from SER will design, build, demonstrate and field-test a water desalination and oxidation unit, integrated with steam methane reforming functionality, to ultimately produce one ton of hydrogen a day using produced water at a cost of around 15% below existing methods.

The technology will be designed at the University of Wyoming and Los Alamos National Labs in Santa Fe, NM, manufactured in Cheyenne, and deployed at the Williams Echo Springs gas plant.

After completion of the award, the University of Wyoming will own the containerized pilot and use it to facilitate other awards.

In January 2024, the University of Wyoming School of Energy Resources was awarded $2,750,000 in funding by the Wyoming Energy Authority for the pilot project.