Hydraulic fracturing and geothermal energy

Hydraulic fracturing has been and continues to be a major techno­ logical tool in oil and gas recovery, nuclear and other waste disposal, mining and particularly in-situ coal gasification, and, more recently, in geothermal heat recovery, particularly extracting heat from hot dry rock masses. The understanding of the fracture process under the ac­ tion of pressurized fluid at various temperatures i...