Waterless Fracking promises more energy, less trouble

wattsupwiththat.com ^ | November 7, 2014 | Anthony Watts

[Bob]

The enviro-whackos will undoubtedly freak out over the amount of nitrogen being released into the air.:=) it’ll doom the erf I tell you.

[Smokin' Joe]

GASFRAC uses gelled LPG, so I would imagine there would be other solutions as well.

[353FMG]

Where does the left think this nitrogen originates from, in the first place?

[Quickgun]

Nitrogen and co2 have been used in fracturing since the early ‘80’s that I’m aware of. Still not as good as water.

[driftless2]

Where are the enviro-wacko Baghdad Bobs who are always proclaiming we’ve reached peak oil? They’ve been fairly silent lately.

[knarf]

The water / sand mix prevents the fissures from coming back in on themselves keeping the surface stable.

Cracks alone could cause massive havoc that could telegraph hundreds of miles.

[no-s]

problem I see is proppant mixing and transport with a -70 liquid.

Pretty sure there exist conventional industrial processes that use liquid CO2 to transport particulates. Similarly for liquid nitrogen. If I'm reading the phase diagrams and such right those are supercritical fluids at those pressures and temps which means it will seep right into everything (no surface tension to speak of) and act as a solvent for all sorts of weird stuff (eg metal nanoparticles and polymers).

If you take the pressure off properly at temperature it can flash into vapor faster than the speed of sound in the rock, AKA earth-shattering kaboom. Unlike conventional explosives you can do this over and over again.

All in theory, of course. But it's not so "out there".

[smokingfrog]

It sounds like it would be a lot more expensive to do it that way.

[TBP]

All the more reason for libbies to oppose it.

[minnesota_bound]

The commies would complain about the rocks cracking. There is no end to their whining.

[aposiopetic]

That would be so cool.

Well said.

[cpdiii]

My first encounter with a nitrogen frack job was about 1970, in South Louisiana. It “aint” nothing new but I am sure the engineering has become better and more specific to what kind of frac job is best for each particular formation.

What did amaze me is how fast we brought the well on line. After the frac job was done we were flaring gas and it was a lot of gas, within one hour.

[cpdiii]

My first encounter with a nitrogen frack job was about 1970, in South Louisiana. It “aint” nothing new but I am sure the engineering has become better and more specific to what kind of frac job is best for each particular formation.

What did amaze me is how fast we brought the well on line. After the frac job was done we were flaring gas and it was a lot of gas, within one hour.

[Dexter Morgan]

Bump...of major interest to me.

[Antoninus II]

You need to keep the fractures open, too.

Exactly!

[TangoLimaSierra]

Thanks. Interesting.

[thackney]

The CO2 does not remain underground when the process is complete.

[taildragger]

Their was a great article in Forbes a year or so back on the Fracking Revolution. They interviewed a CEO of one of the major Oil Companies who bought into this game, since they didn't get into it @ square one. He had one line in the article saying in effect here is our return with the state of the art today or something to that effect. Which says to me, more Technologies such as this one mentioned ( yes I read the post that it may not be as cutting edge as the article states ) can Increase Yield, and No we have not seen the end of the Evolution of the series of technologies that fall under the umbrella of Fracking, it is not a fixed list of ingredients if you will like a cake recipe. It may in fact Evolve or have a additional Revolutions within itself.

[bestintxas]

“Pumping carbon dioxide into the ground is one method of sequestration.”

So, you will not be producing back the CO2 you just pumed into well?

How does that work?

[cripplecreek]

According to thackney the CO2 doesn’t stay in the ground with this method.

I think they could but at the end of the day its still pointless because we’re talking about a harmless gas.