Facts About Clean Fracking Technology

By Angela Anderson


Presently, the world, by a large extent depends on petroleum energy sources. Nearly each activity that humans undertake has the use of petroleum energy involved to some extent. As a matter of fact, there exist nations whose entire economies depend on products of petroleum. It is in light of this that little variations in oil and oil product prices often significantly affect the economy of the world.

Because of the high dependence on petroleum products, studies are still being carried out to develop effective methods of extraction. The aim of the studies is to find ways of exploiting oil while keeping costs down. Fracking is among the methods that have been developed recently to help in oil extraction. Although the technique is very efficient, efforts for achieving clean fracking technology are still being made.

Fracking is a word that is used as a short form for hydrauling fracturing. It is a process through which sand, water, and chemicals are injected underground to crack open rock layers to release gas and oil trapped inside them. The mixture of sand, chemicals, and water are pumped into oil wells at very high pressures to generate the necessary force needed to crack rock layers.

Hydrofacturing, facing and hydrofracturing are other terms used in reference to fracking technology. The mixture of water, chemicals and sand is called fracking fluid. Upon creation of the fractures using fracking fluid, natural gas, petroleum and brine flow freely. The created cracks remain open after removal of hydraulic pressure because tiny hydraulic fracturing proppants keep them open.

Even though the process of fraccing only became popular in the mid-2000s, it has a very long history that dates several decades back. This technology has been in use in the oil industry as back as 1949. It was used to increase flow of gas in wells in places like Kansas. However, in 2000s, oil companies in the United States find ways of combing fraccing with horizontal drilling to extract oil at a reasonable cost.

Chemicals are heavily used in this whole process. Therefore, the process cannot be categorized as being environmentally friendly. However, efforts are being made to make it more environmentally friendly. Among the ways of reducing pollution is the use of additives that reduce friction. Research shows that this method allows for the use of brine or recycled water.

The drilling and pumping processes involved in oil extraction use heavy pieces of equipment that use diesel engines. These engines emit a lot of carbon into the air as well as harmful pollutants. By replacing diesel engines with engines that use natural gas or some other cleaner sources of energy, this process can be made significantly cleaner. Also, this would cut costs by about 40 percent.

One of the major concerns in oil extraction sites is emission of methane. It was found recently that too much of methane gas is released into the air. Actually, studies found that over 50 percent of methane is released into the air than the official approximations the US government had provided before. This process can be cleaner if ways of reducing release of methane gas are found.




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