amounts of contaminants therefore it may be desirable to use the ec system 10 for a threshold treatment of the water as it is delivered thus reducing viscosity and before mixing with sand or chemicals as indicated above the ec system 10 is otherwise self contained so that it is easy to move to and from the well head 12 fig2 and 3 illustrate the basic operating parameters of the system 10 in the recycling scenario the flow back 18 is delivered to a pretreatment holding tank 24 see fig2 from there the flow back is passed to a manifold feed system 28 see fig3 via line 26 the manifold system 28 distributes the flow back to a series of parallel ec treatment cells indicated generally at 30 each ec treatment cell has an internal configuration of charged plates that come into contact with the flow back ec treatment cells with charged plate configurations have been in general use with ec systems for a long time however to the extent possible it is desirable to select plate and flow through configurations that create turbulent flow within each cell further described below it is undesirable to generate significant amounts of flocculation within the cells 30 themselves after treatment by the cells 30 the flow back is returned to a series of settling tanks 32 see fig2 via line 34 the ec treatment in the cells causes flocculent to be subsequently generated in the settling tanks 32 there the contaminants are removed from the water via a settling out process solid materials are removed from the settling tanks 32 and trucked off site for later disposal in a conventional manner the clarified water is then passed through sand media 36 usually.