Mining and Fracking
Arianna Moreno & Shekinah Davis
Fracking
- The process of drilling down and injecting fluid into the earth at a high pressure in order to fracture shale rocks and release natural gas inside.
How's it done?
1. A vertical pipe is put into the ground for hundreds of feet deep until it reaches the shale and then it is turns horizontally to run parallel to the shale.
2. The fracking fluid is then "pressure injected" into the pipe.
3. The fluid then reaches the end of the well where the high pressure cracks the shale and releases natural gas.
What are the effects on the environment?
1. It releases harmful Voc's into the atmosphere creating acid rain contaminated air ground leveled ozone
2.Approximately 300,000 barrels of natural gases are produced a day causing environmental safety hazards.
3.Contaminated drinking water
Fracking Images
Mining
- When soil and rock overlying the mineral deposit are removed.
Subsurface Mining:
- The extraction of minerals and ores from underground.
Strip Mining
What is it?
This mining involves digging up earth rock to uncover a layered mineral reserve.What it does?
It extracts coal or other rocks that are sedimentary.
How its done?
It uses things called pits or strips to do the digging.
Effects on the environment?
-Reduce the soil's fertility
-Damage roads, homes, and other structures.
-The dust etc. from mining creates air pollution.
-Can also pollute water.
Strip Mining Images
Open Pit Mining
-Extracting of rocks and minerals from the earth by the removal from an open pit.
What it does?
-It extracts rocks and minerals from the earth.
How its done?
1. Open cast mines are dug on benches (the vertical layers in the pit).
2. Waste rock is removed and set in a waste pile off to the side of the site.
3. Ore, rocks, and minerals are then extracted.
Effects on the Environment?
-formation of sinkholes
-loss of animal/plant life in that area
-contamination of soil, surface water and ground water.
Open Pit Mining Images
Mountain Top Removal
- A mining process where the tops of mountains are removed, to expose the coal beneath.
What it does?
- It blasts the tops of mountains of to retrieve coal that is beneath for processing.
How its done?
1. Coal companies raze the mountainside. They burn the vegetation and all plant life is removed.
2. Deep holes are dug for explosives.
3. Explosives are then set inside these holes and then they are blown.
4. The coal and debris is removed by digging.
5. Finally, coal is processed.
So basically...
-Clearing,blasting,digging,dumping waste,processing,reclamation.
Effects on the Environment?
-Extremely destructive process of mining. (sometimes called surface mining on steroids).
-Destructive to neighboring homes because of the blasts.
-All plant life in that area is removed and burned.
-Drinking water is contaminated.
Mountaintop Removal Images
Subsurface
-happen but modern industry which can sharply elevate stope productivity and cut mining cost, has become a big trend in the development of mining techniques in underground mines.
Drift
-Drift mining is used to access a range of minerals like gold, coal, quartz, and zinc. It poses high economical means of recovery than other more invasive types of underground mining that entail digging up through rock.
Shaft
-Is the earnest form of underground mining. shaft mining is the kind of mining you see in movies where the miner travels straight down into a profound dark tunnel until he reaches the base.Shaft mining has a perpendicular man shaft.