Hydraulic Fracturing, known by its much cooler name of “hydro-fracking,” is a process used to tap into reserves of different resources, but for the purpose of this post we will be discussing hydro-fracking’s use in the acquisition of natural gas. While humans have been utilizing fracturing techniques based in hydraulics since the 1950s, using it to acquire large quantities of natural gas is a relatively new endeavor for the United States, and was jump-started largely by current President Barrack Obama.

The physical process of hydro-fracking is slightly complicated but I’ll give a brief summary. The main goal of hydro-fracking is to locate resources like natural gas that is trapped in between rock layers and forcing it out of the ground by using a fracturing fluid to create a channel for the gas to flow up and be collected. The process of hydraulic fracturing will, according to the National Petroleum Council, “account for nearly 70% of natural gas development in the future.” Hydraulic fracturing also puts a significant number of Americans to work, accounting for about 600,000 jobs in the country according to IHS Global Insight. Hydro-fracking is the only method known that makes drilling for the vast resources of natural gas available to the U.S. truly viable.

Positive aspects of utilizing hydraulic fracturing to access natural gas includes lessening our dependence on foreign oil and environmentally crippling coal. Natural gas is much cleaner burning than the latter two and it is located within our borders. It gives us better energy independence and can put hundreds of thousands of people to work.

The potentially negative consequences of hydro-fracking are definitely concerning considering the fact that it will become the primary method of fossil fuel extraction in the United States in the coming years. The primary concern with hydro-fracking is that the chemicals used to make fracturing fluid are potentially hazardous to humans should they seep accidentally into ground water/drinking water reservoirs. According to one environmental watchdog, “The drilling boom in Colorado’s Garfield County has triggered a rash of citizen complaints that petrochemical pollution has caused adrenal and pituitary tumors, headaches, nausea, joint pain, respiratory problems, and other symptoms.” These issues can arise from air pollution stemming from the hydro-fracking sites and not just ground-water contamination.

So the facts are laid out on the table. Hydraulic fracturing is easily one of the most important technologies we possess when it comes to securing a cleaner source of energy, and it lessens our need for oil from unstable parts of the world like Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. However the environmental risks associated with hydro-fracking are very real and can be deadly if energy companies aren’t careful or held accountable enough.

Sources:

National Petroleum Council, Prudent Development: Realizing the Potential of North America’s Abundant Natural Gas and Oil Resources, September 15, 2011

IHS Global Insight, The Economic and Employment Contributions of Shale Gas in the United States, December 2011.

Valerie J. Brown – “Industry Issues: Putting the Heat on Gas”             http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1817691/

Amy Mall – “Incidents where hydraulic fracturing is a suspected cause of drinking water contamination” http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/amall/incidents_where_hydraulic_frac.html

For our first experiment in Sci-184 Hybrid, we basically did what I loved so much growing up, built stuff out of Legos and messed with a new computer program. Constructing the NXT Robot itself was a fun time for my partners and I. Locating certain pieces proved to be a bit of a challenge, but we persevered and got it assembled!

…Only to find that we assembled the robotic motor “arms” backwards, so the front wheel didn’t quite touch the ground as it was supposed to. We remedied this problem quite quickly, but it was a moment of the building process that will stick with me due to its sheer Homer Simpson “D’oh!” factor. The next step after assembling the main body of the robot was to connect cables from the NXT robot to its motor arms. This gives the robot the “brains” to translate incoming programming code (which I will elaborate on later in this blog) from the NXT main body to its robot arms, creating movement!

The program we were using was called LabView, and it was similar to some programs I’ve used in the past but definitely proved to be a unique experience for me. The program works by creating a kind of virtual schematic of what actions you want the robot to perform, and then actually sends the code directly to the robot via a USB cable connection so the program can be executed remotely, free of wires, by pressing a button on the main body of the NXT.

Once we were all set up with our program, we got used to using it by making it go forwards and in reverse and even dabbled with making it go in circles. Circular motion was attained by giving one motor arm more power than the other in LabView, making one wheel perform more rotations per second and therefore creating a circular motion. The main experiment we performed involved giving the robot differing amounts of battery time, or power, and calculating some statistics about it (such as distance traveled, RPMs, velocity, etc.) We calculated this by using the program and by using our own judgment with a good old fashioned ruler. I will post the results below. We calculated the percent of error in our measurements and found that all of the tests fell on or below the 20% acceptable threshold for error.

Overall this experiment went smoothly, and I had a lot of fun building the robot and messing around in LabView. Successful science!

Results of test 1: (1 sec run time)

Distance measured by ruler – 23/24 cm

Distance measured by program – 23 cm

Total rotations – 1.48

Velocity – .23 m/s

1% error

Results of test 2: (.5 seconds of run time)

Distance by ruler – 13cm

Distance by program – 11cm

Total rotations – .70

Velocity – .22 m/s

16% error

Results of Test 3: (.75 seconds)

Distance by ruler – 21 cm

Distance by program – 18cm

Rotations – 1.15

Velocity – .24 m/s

20% error

Results of Test 4: (1.25 seconds)

Distance by ruler – 33cm

Distance by program – 30cm

Rotations – 1.9

Velocity – .24 m/s

9% error

As gas prices continue to hover between “Aww I guess I won’t get dessert with dinner on Friday” and, “Aww I guess my kids can pay for college themselves or become street performers,” more people in the United States are finally coming around to the notion that it’s slightly damaging, to the environment and (most important to them) their wallets, to drive around in a gargantuan truck or mock military vehicle getting 13 miles to the gallon when the only “precious cargo” they’ll ever need to carry is their double chocolate ice cream cake from Dairy Queen. Bit of a cynical intro? Maybe. But the point remains that cars with better fuel efficiency are soaring in popularity in the present day. There are a few pertinent reasons for why this is happening.

The most important reason why more fuel efficient cars are being spit out of US factories today is simple: because the government is requiring them to. Former President George W. Bush’s administration, not exactly known by reputation for its green thumb, raised the fuel efficiency standards of US automakers back in 2007. Current President Barack Obama just raised them even higher in 2012, shooting for a rather optimistic goal of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. Obama’s hopeful increase will be easily the largest mandate for fuel economy since the government started measuring fuel economy in 1970.

US car company executives were infuriated to a point of “camp-out on the Washington lawn” protests back in 2007/2008, but the new increase in standards faced extremely little resistance from producers. This could be partially due to the nearly $80 billion dollar bailout that president Obama orchestrated for General Motors and Chrysler (including their parts suppliers) between 2008 and 2010. That kind of handout money will make companies tolerate a whole lot of new mandates. However that likely isn’t the only reason executives don’t mind adhering to the new law.

The second big reason car companies in America don’t mind pumping out new better fuel efficient cars is that they are becoming more and more profitable by the year. When at one time, “the Detroit automakers lost money on most of their small cars, which they built mainly to push up their fleetwide mileage ratings,” it is now becoming possible to turn a large profit on smaller more fuel efficient cars. Companies can make cars more fuel efficient while at the same time keeping their cars on the cutting edge of technology, and conveniently enough the two endeavors are often achievable hand-in-hand. For instance, “Ford now offers a V-6 “ecoboost” engine on its F-150 pickup truck that generates more horsepower and torque than a V-8 that’s available—with slightly better mileage.” There is concern that the new technologies will cost consumers more when buying a car, but the hope is that mileage increases will save consumers enough at the pump annually to balance out the increased costs.

This mandated increase in efficiency is great for consumers, it seems to be great for car manufacturers who are recovering soundly from their near collapse just a few years ago, and most importantly it is good for the planet. The White House touched on how the mandate will reduce our thirst for oil significantly, saying, “these programs will dramatically reduce our reliance on foreign oil, saving a total of 12 billion barrels of oil and reducing oil consumption by more than 2 million barrels a day by 2025 — as much as half of the oil we import from OPEC each day.” More fuel efficiency also means less carbon emissions and a change in a more positive direction in regards to addressing the climate change issue. The government has claimed that “The mileage rules will cut greenhouse gas emissions from cars and light trucks in half by 2025.”

I think it’s a wonderful thing that we’re seeing a dwindling amount of Hummers on the road and an increasing amount of Priuses and Chevy Volts. While more people driving more efficient vehicles will not come close to completely erasing the decades of neglect when it came to what our cars were shooting out of their exhaust pipes, it is definitely a change for the better. The government mandating this increase in efficiency seems to be a rare occasion where the government stepped in to make a fix for something and didn’t completely screw one part of society over; everyone wins here!

Sources:

Rick Newman – US News.com, August 27th, 2012 – http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/rick-newman/2012/08/27/tough-government-gas-mileage-rules-good-for-drivers-auto-industry

CBS/Associated Press – CBS News, August 28th, 2012 – http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162-57501765/new-fuel-standards-aim-to-double-gas-mileage/

Bill Vlasic – NY Times, July 18th, 2011 – http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/29/business/carmakers-back-strict-new-rules-for-gas-mileage.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0