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What the Frak is Fracking?
Fracking is a technical term for hydraulic fracturing of deep rock deposits, developed and perfected by the oil & gas industry in which a high pressure fluid is injected into a deep (oil or gas bearing in the case of the Oil & Gas industry) geologic formation in order to fracture the rock and make it more permeable. In fracking the high pressure fluid spreads out from the bore hole creating a spreading fracture zone around it. The fractures are kept open by injecting sand or small ceramic beads – called poppants – into the spreading cracks that are mixed in slurry with the water.
Fracking has gotten a bad name with environmentalists because the oil and gas industry commonly mixes other (secretive and polluting) additives into the working fluid designed to chemically enhance the physical hydraulic pressure effects with the oil or gas bearing rocks. These additives then pollute the aquifers within those rock deposits. The additives are used in the oil and gas industry because the objective is to extract the physically AND chemically bonded hydrocarbons contained within the rock formation.
Fracking is also used in the water industry in order to increase the flow of water into a bore hole. In this case, only a pure water and poppant (i.e. sand or ceramic bead) slurry is forced down the well and into the spreading fracture zone. This is also what would be done for geothermal hot rock fracking, because the objective is purely the physical cracking or fracturing of a zone of hot rocks in order to make them water permeable and thus able to produce hot water or steam.
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Seems the oil and gas industry is the worst one for causing pollution from fracking.