What´s Hydraulic Fracturing?

Humans have been able to find ways to completely deplete the Earth of its resources. That comes in the forms of extracting fossil fuels from the Earth and using for just about anything that requires gasoline. The industry is finding more innovative ways to extract these same fossil fuels from the Earth. One of these new ways is Hydraulic Fracturing; also known as Fracking. Unfortunately, Fracking is the cause of many different health problems and extensive environmental issues. So, you may be wondering what any of that even means. What is Hydraulic Fracturing? The best way to explain this is to break it down step by step. Hydraulic fracturing is a process that begins by producing cracks and fractures in the specific rock formation. These cracks and fractures will stimulate a flow of natural gas or oil. This process helps …show more content…
How does one even extract natural gas and oils? Once the injection process is completed, the initial pressure of the rock formation that they injected the solution into causes fluid to return to the surface via the wellbore. This fluid may contain the injected chemicals plus naturally occurring materials. These naturally occurring materials can be anything from brines and metals to radionuclides and hydrocarbons. The flowback and produced water is typically stored on site of the initial fracturing. Normally, they will be stored in tanks or large pits before treatment, disposal or recycling.
In many cases unfortunately, the excess chemicals and waste is injected underground for disposal. In the areas where that disposal option is not available to them, it will more than likely be treated and reused. Or it can be processed by a wastewater treatment facility. Afterwards it can then be discharged to surface water. So now that you know what exactly hydraulic fracturing is, and how they are disposing of it, you may start to see some of the initial problems that this may