Hydrofracking! Part 1

1. What is hydrofracking?
also known as hydraulic fracturing, a technique in which large amounts of water, combined with smaller amounts of chemicals and sand, are pumped under high pressure into a drilled gas well, to extract oil from shale.
2. What is methane?
It is a chemical compound with the chemical formula CH4 (one atom of carbon and four atoms of hydrogen). It is the simplest alkane and the main component of natural gas. The relative abundance of methane makes it an attractive fuel, though capturing and storing it poses challenges due to its gaseous state found at normal conditions. In its natural state, methane is found both below ground, and under the sea floor, where it often finds its way to the surface and in the atmosphere of Earth where it is known as atmospheric methane.
3. What is the boiling point of methane?
-258.7°F (-161.5°C)
4. What is biogenic methane and thermogenic methane?
Biogenic gas is created by methanogenic organisms in marshes, bogs, landfills, and shallow sediments. Deeper in the earth, at greater temperature and pressure, thermogenic gas is created from buried organic material.
5. What are three advantages and disadvantages of hydrofracking?
Advantages:
It is an easy and fast way to extract natural gas and oil from the rocks underneath the earth’s crust.
Hydrofracking provides many people with well-paying and sustainable jobs.
It is cheap to do, and since we get it on our own soil, we don't have to trade with foreigners for oil

Disadvantages
It is polluting our air with toxic methane, a key component in natural gas, and contaminating our water with chemicals the workers use to drill.
It causes soil and oil spill contaminations and even earthquakes from deep wells. 
With chemicals and water flushing down into the earth’s layers, these chemicals are contaminating the water underground that goes into our wells, water supplies, and lakes



Sources energy.wilkes.edu/pages/156.asp
http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/health/case_studies/hydrofracking_w.html
http://www.tigergeneral.com/advantages-of-hydrofracking/
http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/despite-the-dangers-of-fracking-north-carolina-lawmakers-want-to-legalize-it/Content?oid=2454484