Hydraulic Fracturing, also called hydro fracturing, hydro fracking, fracking, or fraccing is a technique of oil mining. It was tested for the first time in 1947 and success to be applied commercially in the next 3 years. In 2012, there were 2.5 billion oil mining using hydraulic fracturing around the world.
Basically, this technique is divided into 3 main stage.
Well digging
Well digging is done by crushing rocks with high-pressure liquids pumping and drills with diamond eye. The pumping is intended to softer the rock which make it easier to be crushed, and the drill is intended to make a hole in the bowels of the earth to mine oil.
Hole making
Hole making is done by creating explosion using dynamite or nitroglycerin. This hole will be the channel for mining oil from the bowels of the earth.
Hold open the hole
The sand, which is contained in the liquids will hold open the newly created hole and cause the oil ‘slide’ to surface through the hole.
The liquids is not only contain water and tight sands, but also contain acid, surfactant/gelling agent and other else. The tight sands or proppants has function to help the process of rock crushing, to hold the hole, and to smooth out the drilling process. The function of surfactant is to prevent the sand deposits. If the deposits happened, the well would be clogged and certainly disturbing the drilling and mining process.
