The expansion of unconventional shale gas and hydraulic fracturing has increased the volume of the oil and gas wastewater (OGW) generated in the U.S. Here we demonstrate that OGW from Marcellus and Fayetteville hydraulic fracturing flowback fluids and Appalachian conventional produced waters is characterized by high chloride, bromide, iodide (up to 56 mg/L), and ammonium (up to 420 mg/L). Br/Cl...

BACKGROUND The economic value of unconventional natural gas resources has stimulated rapid globalization of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. However, natural radioactivity found in the large volumes of "produced fluids" generated by these technologies is emerging as an international environmental health concern. Current assessments of the radioactivity concentration in liquid waste...

It is common practice in industry to monitor hydraulic fracturing jobs by picking major, micro-earthquake events in seismograms whose source locations form a spatial pattern used for interpreting induced fractures. Surprisingly, controversy still surrounds the interpretation of these scattered, discrete events. Many authors conclude that hydraulic fractures are generated by shear failure events...

[1] A detailed understanding of the coupling between fluid and solid mechanics is important for understanding many processes in Earth sciences. Numerical models are a popular means for exploring these processes, but most models do not adequately handle all aspects of this coupling. This paper presents the application of a micromechanically based fluid-solid coupling scheme, lattice-Boltzmann di...

A carefully engineered stimulation that makes use of opening mode fractures is an effective way to reduce injection and production impedance and provide better access for the fluid to enter and promote shearing in the main reservoir volume. We present results from field experiments that mapped the fracture geometry for opening mode hydraulic fractures formed in naturally fractured crystalline r...

Induced seismicity has been recognized as a concern in subsurface industrial operation, and particularly at fluid-injection sites in major oil and gas exploitation plays, where hydraulic stimulations are conducted to increase rock permeability. Induced seismicity occurs also in Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS), where hydraulic fracturing is used to accelerate heat extraction from the rock. If ...

Considering the fact that rocks fail faster under tensile stress, rock tensile strength is of greatimportance in applications such as blasting, rock fragmentation, slope stability, hydraulic fracturing,caprock integrity, and geothermal energy extraction. There are two direct and indirect methods tomeasure tensile strength. Since direct methods always encompass difficulties in test setup, indire...