Analyzing TENORM in Hydraulic Fracturing Wastes

Hydraulic fracturing, commonly referred to as fracking, is a method used to extract oil and natural gas from shale and coalbed deposits by high-pressure injection of a cocktail mix of chemicals, sand and water. However, absorbed in the returning produced wastewaters along with the desired hydrocarbons are Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material (NORM). Through the various refinement and waste treatment processes these activities can further concentrate the radiological contents into Technologically Enhanced NORM (TENORM). A technique has been developed to perform rapid screening of the radioactivity based on gamma spectroscopy using a scintillation detector with advanced algorithmic processing of the data.