How Bad Fracking Can Contaminate Water

Science Magazine last week had an excellent review of fracking and water well contamination. It presented the technology in a fair manner although I think it was a little spotty on exactly how a gas well is dug and what can go wrong during this step that leads to contamination of aquifers. After all, the natural gas is located far beneath aquifers. How can it end up in someone's water well thousands of feet higher up?

This picture from the article shows a typical well, but I don't think it is really obvious how the well ended up looking like that, what with all these different cement annuli, the decreasing width of the well with depth, etc.

This is a 3-stage well. The first stage is the uppermost, widest part. The well is started with a large diameter drill (let's call it 12 inches just to have a number to work with) that drills down a certain distance. The drill is removed and pipe of a slightly smaller diameter (call it 11 inches) is placed in the hole. Wet cement is then shoved down the inside of the pipe and forced with a piston-like device to the very bottom of the well and then up into the annulus between the rock and the pipe. That's the first stage. The second stage is quite similar, but would start with a smaller drill, say 9 inches in this case. The drilling continues for another span, the drill is removed and then like before, pipe of a smaller diameter (call it 7 1/2 inches) is put in the well and similarly cemented in place. And so on for the third stage.

The process is far more complicated than this in practice as the gas in the ground is under pressure and wants to exit the ground before anyone is ready for it (a la the Deepwater Horizon disaster) and this is where drilling muds and cement density and other factors come in. That is far too involved of a subject for today, but know that these are issues that need to be addressed by the drilling engineers.

The key issues in avoiding water contamination is ensuring that the cement is properly set. If not, the gas then has an easy access route up to the aquifer along the annulus outside of the pipe. The inset in the picture above shows 5 different ways in which the cementing can fail. With fracking, there are additional concerns because different chemicals are driven into the rock formations to fracture (hence the term "fracking") the rock and increase the gas flow. And just like the gases, these chemicals can also end up in aquifers when the well is improperly cemented.

I hope that clarifies for one and all how well construction occurs and that you can see the importance of doing it properly. A properly constructed well should not cause any issues to aquifers or the general environment that people encounter, while a poorly constructed one can be an environmental nightmare. This is no different than any other technology - mining, pulp and paper, chemical/auto/semiconductor manufacturing, construction...Any industry can be a boon or a bane to the environment. We have to decide how we want to proceed, but understanding the basics of the technology (something very few people do when it comes to fracking) is essential so that the decisions are not based on just fear and other emotions.

The Chinese Don't Want Our Garbage

The Chinese government caused a stir last week when they announced their "Green Fence" - a ban on the importation of plastics intended for recycling. And you know, they are right. Look at what Peter Wang, CEO of America Chung Nam, the primary recovered paper supplier to Nine Dragons Paper in China recently said:

"If China customs found a syringe, even if it's just one, in a bale of plastic, it's considered medical waste and the whole shipment would get rejected," he said. "And in paper, if they see too much plastic in the paper, also that could actually trigger a rejection in customs as well."

A syringe is medical waste and has no business at all being in a plastic waste stream. Ever. The US would handle it that pile of plastic the same way, so for the Chinese to do so is also to be expected. I certainly wouldn't want to work with plastic contaminated with medical waste regardless of where ever in the world I was. And the same goes for plastic contaminating paper. That would gunk up any paper recycling plant in the US and the Chinese are not magically better than us in dealing with that waste.

Contaminated recycling streams like this are nothing more than garbage, pure and simple, and nobody loves our garbage. Either the streams need to be set up better in the first place or we will have to deal with it on our own.

That Didn't Take Long

As promised on Friday, Dow Chemical has announced that they will appeal the $1.2 billion verdict against them for price-fixing polyurethance components.

A close reading of the links above will show that the announcement actually preceded my prediction by about 30 minutes. I honestly didn't see the ChemicalWeek article on my Feedly reader until this morning, but since I am so good at post-prediction, how about I tell you that I think the winning Powerball numbers for last Saturday's drawing will be 22, 10, 13, 14, 52 with the PowerBall being 11.

Dow Chemical Hit With Triple Damages for Price Fixing Case

It's official. Dow Chemical now has to pay triple damages after being found guilty of price fixing urethane components. That means that the $400 million dollar fine that the jury established is now a whopping $1.2 BILLION dollar fine. $400 million is so small that Dow could have almost hidden that in the annual report, but with $1.2 billion, that is going to show up loud and clear.

Do you hear that sound coming from the general direction of Midland, Michigan? That's the sound of lawyers furiously banging out their briefs for the appeals court. As I said back in February, Dow must be seriously regretting not negotiating a settlement, a step that all the other accused companies took. Overturning a judgement on appeal, or even getting the fine reduced is never easy as presumption is now working against them. (Innocent until proven guilty only works in the first case. On appeal, it's the opposite).

Buy & Selling Division in the Polymer Industry

Large chemical companies are constantly buying and selling the various divisions in their collection. Often the rearrangements make sense, and other times they don't. A couple of recent announcements from the business world capture this perfectly.

First, Plastemart is reporting that the BOPP (biaxially oriented polypropylene) film operations of ExxonMobil are being sold to Jindal, an Indian company. This is following the trend of more-and-more BOPP being made by companies not headquartered in North America and Europe. Witness the recent acquisition of AET Films by Taghleef Films of Dubai. This trend has been going on my entire career. My first position out of school way back in 1989 was with the BOPP operations that were then part of Hercules. ExxonMobil was a competitor, but it was clear back then BOPP film was quickly becoming a commodity, so Hercules sold the division off to AET Films. Hercules was clearly ahead of its time since ExxonMobil is only now making the same decision 24 years later. Granted, Hercules had lots of financial problems and no longer exists. I would not expect the same future for ExxonMobil. Regardless, it makes sense that they are exiting a business with very small margins.

On the other hand, the decision of Bayer to exit the carbon nanotube business makes much less sense to me. Sure, sales are not following the hyped hockey-stick trajectory that I'm sure marketing promised, but this is still a relevant and growing technology arena. I can't believe they won't regret the decision in 10 years. (Such decisions are easy to track since the business will still exist. Compare this to when a company deep-sixes a product entirely - it's much more difficult to regret such choices since you can't track how the acquiring firm did with the product.) Bayer certainly has the deep pockets needed to continue the effort, but clearly has chosen not to.

Flouropolymers! How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways

This past Monday, the Minnesota Vikings [1] announced [2] the continuation of their long-term obsession with fluorine polymers. This love affair first started over 30 years ago when the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome (aka, the world's largest Kaiser Roll) was built and the team started playing their home games there. The roof is made up of polyethylene fabric that is held up by the higher air pressure in the building except for those couple of times when the weight from heavy snowstorms collapsed the roof.

Through the kind generosity of the People of Minnesota, we are building the Vikings a new stadium so that the billionaire owner can become even richer than he currently is (it is apparent to one and all that he needs the money more than we do in this difficult economy).

The new design was revealed on Tuesday (as shown), and lo-and-behold! the new stadium has a solid roof. No more Teflon held up by the ideal gas law. No, the new structure has a solid roof held up by the much more desirable van der Waals interactions. But wait, I said the love affair with fluorine polymers continues and it does. What appears to be glass in the new building is actually ETFE, a copolymer of ethylene and tetrafluorethylene.

The Vikings previously had a 30-year lease in the Metrodome, and will have a 50-year lease in this new building, thus cementing an 80-year relationship with fluoropolymers. So I think today's post can be summed up graphically as:




[1] For the international readers, the Vikings are the local football team. American football. You know, the sport where the foot contacts the ball less than a dozen times in a typical 1-hour game that takes over 3 hours to play.

[2] I thought it was rather odd that the announcement was made at the Guthrie Theater, a world-renowned playhouse. For most football fans, it was probably the first and last time they would set foot in that place.