Shale gas produced water (SGPW) treatment imposes greater technical challenges because of its high concentration of various contaminants. Membrane distillation crystallization (MDC) has a great potential to manage SGPW since it is capable of recovering both water and minerals at high rates, up to near a zero liquid discharge (ZLD) condition. To evaluate the feasibility of MDC for SGPW treatment, MDC performance indicators, such as water recovery rate, solid production rate (SPR) and specific energy consumption (SEC), were systematically investigated, to our knowledge for the first time, by using actual SGPW from Eagle Ford Shale (USA). The main operating parameters including feed cross-flow velocity (CFV) and crystallization temperature (T_Cr) were optimized by performing a series of MDC experiments. The results reported that water and minerals were effectively recovered with 84% of recovery rate and 2.72 kg/m²day of SPR under respective optimal operating conditions. Furthermore, the scale mechanism was firstly identified as limiting factor for MDC performance degradation. Lastly, SEC of MDC was estimated to be as low as 28.2 kWh/m³ under ideal optimal operating conditions. Our experimental observations demonstrated that MDC could sustainably and effectively recover water and mineral with low energy consumption from SGPW by optimizing operating condition.

页岩气采出水（SGPW）处理由于其各种污染物的浓度高而带来了更大的技术挑战。膜蒸馏结晶（MDC）具有处理SGPW的巨大潜力，因为它能够以高速率回收水和矿物质，直至接近零液体排放（ZLD）的条件。为了评估MDC用于SGPW的可行性，我们首次使用实际的SGPW系统地研究了MDC性能指标，例如水回收率，固体生产率（SPR）和比能耗（SEC）。来自美国的Eagle Ford Shale。主要操作参数包括进料错流速度（CFV）和结晶温度（T _Cr）通过执行一系列MDC实验进行了优化。结果表明，在相应的最佳操作条件下，水和矿物质的回收率达到84％，SPR为2.72 kg / m ²天，可有效地进行回收。此外，规模机制首先被确定为MDC性能下降的限制因素。最后，在理想的最佳操作条件下，MDC的SEC估计低至28.2 kWh / m ³。我们的实验观察表明，通过优化运行条件，MDC可以可持续，有效地从SGPW中回收低能耗的水和矿物质。