Enhancement of groundwater yield by hydrofracturing technique: A case study from crystalline hard rock terrain
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Enhancement of groundwater yield by hydrofracturing technique: A case study from crystalline hard rock terrain Senthilkumar Ramalingam 1 & Ganapathy Chidambaram 2 & Gnanachandrasamy Gopalakrishnan 3,4 Received: 5 May 2020 / Accepted: 20 August 2020 # Saudi Society for Geosciences 2020
Abstract Hydrofracturing process was developed during the 1940s for improving the yield from oil and gas wells. Later this technique was adopted for water well development. The hydrofracturing process consists of pumping test before and after fracturing a well. The pre-fracturing and post-fracturing pumping test results are analysed and correlated to estimate the yield improvement realized due to fracturing. An attempt was made to improve the groundwater yield from a borewell in hard rock formation in Thachchur Village of Cuddalore District, Tamil Nadu, India. The pre-pumping static water level was 4.25 m below measuring point (bmp), and the safe yield was 5 litres per minute (lpm)/16 m drawdown/8 h of pumping per day. Hydrofracturing was carried out using a single packer assembly system, and two fracture zones lying at the depth of 15 m and 45 m were treated. After fracturing treatment, pumping test was carried out. Post-fracturing pumping test results revealed that the safe yield was 80 lpm/16 m drawdown/8 h of pumping per day. The yield improvement from 5 to 80 lpm substantiated the success of hydrofracturing in the hard rock borewell. The groundwater yield improvement in the borewell is due to the enlargement of fissures and cracks in and around the borewell by hydrofracturing. Keywords Groundwater . Pumping test . Hydrofracturing . Yield improvement
Introduction Hydrofracturing is the process of injecting water under enormous pressure down the borewell to widen and clean the fissures/fractures/cracks in the rock formation inside and adjacent to the well. This technique is a yield improvement technique which was
This article is part of the Topical Collection on Recent advanced techniques in water resources management * Gnanachandrasamy Gopalakrishnan [email protected] Senthilkumar Ramalingam [email protected] 1
Department of Earth Sciences, Annamalai University, Annamalai Nagar 608002, India
2
Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board, Salem, Tamil Nadu 636007, India
3
School of Geography and Planning, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China
4
Center for Earth, Environment and Resources, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China
initiated in the gas and oil industry (Tiemann and Vann 2015; Zhang et al. 2018). The hydraulic fracturing process uses high hydraulic pressures to initiate a fracture (EPA 2004; Nak-Youl et al. 2012; Chen et al. 2015). The technology helps to open and flush out the sediments from the existing cracks and fissures in the bedrock thereby allowing fluids to travel more freely through the interstitial space (Gu and Mohanty 2014; Jasechkoa and Perrone 2017; Huang et al. 2018). According to Montgomery and Smith (2010), hydrofracturing originated in the
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