Micro Fracture Propagation During Post Frac Shut In and Enhanced Gas Production from

Shale.
Recently the energy industry has been attracted to research and production of shale gas and as a
results Dr. Hayatdavoudi and his team have been trying to develop a method that would help
evaluate shales and find out where is the area with higher gas production. This document mainly
focused on studying shale specimens using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) imaging to
find out which regions of the shale had absorbed water vapor and then these regions were
compared to the ones where no water vapor had been absorbed. Interestingly, the experiments
show that micro fractures had initiated in the water vapor rich regions. Also, the critical percent
moisture required to calculate the capillaries and generate fractures was calculated.
SEM image analysis was used because it provides a fast and accurate analysis of regions with
fractures and measure the size and type, and also it quantifies and separates the regions where
most water vapor was absorbed and capillaries are activated. The contrast was adjusted in order
to easily differentiate between moist regions and dry regions. The moist regions appears in white
while the dry regions appears in black.
The results indicate that after exposing the specimen to a humid environment the mass initially
decreases because the chamber humidity level was lower than in the storage area, however, when
the chamber humidity level was increased above the storage level the specimens mass started to
increase which leads to the conclusion that shale is hygroscopic in nature, meaning that it has the
ability to absorb water from the environment and retain in within the pores. Also, mineralogy
analysis on specimen J and R indicate the presence of clays like smectite and illite which
contribute to the hygroscopic nature of Shale. The water absorbed by these clays activate the
capillaries which in turn absorb more water until the pressure inside the capillaries is so high and
thus the shale fractures. The fractures in specimen R were estimated to be 20, 35 and 40 microns
thick, while the fractures in specimen J were significantly thinner at about 3 to 4 microns.
Further examination of specimen J reveals micro fractures with cemented material from
biological secretions, as a result this cemented material, which was mostly calcite, provides extra
strength and resistance to failure even in areas where water vapor had been absorbed.
To finalize this experiment the author concluded that shale has a great ability to retain water due
to smectite and illite content. This water accumulates within the pores and generates a great
amount of tensile and shear forces that fracture the shale. Also, the presence of calcite or other
cemented materials increase the resistance to capillary pressure fractures.
Reference
[1] A. Hayatdavoudi, A.Tavanaei, K. G. Savage, S. Salehi. Micro Fracture Propagation During
Post Frac Shut in and Enhanced gas Production from Shale. University of Louisiana at
Lafayette, Lafayette, LA, United States.