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EPA's Study of Hydraulic Fracturing and Its Potential Impact on Drinking Water Resources

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MeshVoro: A three-dimensional Voronoi mesh building tool for the TOUGH family of codes

Freeman et al. Computers and Geosciences. Accepted for publication in May 2014.

Summary

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, with EPA, has developed a computer tool (MeshVoro) which is used to support computer simulation studies of the potential for hydraulic fracturing in shale gas reservoirs to impact aquifers. MeshVoro is used to create a computer model of the complex geology and well design associated with hydraulic fracturing scenarios. Once the conceptual model is constructed using MeshVoro, investigators then use the flow and transport simulation system, TOUGH+, to study different scenarios of hydraulic fracturing in order to better understand the potential implications of hydraulic fracturing. This work was done as part of EPA's Study of the Potential Impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing for Oil and Gas on Drinking Water Resources. 

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EPA's Study of Hydraulic Fracturing and Its Potential Impact on Drinking Water Resources