The rock laboratory where the fracturing experiments took place is located on the Grimsel Pass in the Bernese Oberland. (Image: Zairon, Wikimedia Commons)
The rock laboratory where the fracturing experiments took place is located on the Grimsel Pass in the Bernese Oberland. (Image: Zairon, Wikimedia Commons) - The rock laboratory on the Grimsel Pass in the Bernese Oberland lies 400 metres deep in the mountain. There, geophysicists from the ETH Zurich have installed an experimental setup with which they agitate the rock, thereby systematically causing it to break. They want to find out how geothermal energy projects in Switzerland, for example, can be implemented safely in the future. Two scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag) have now joined this project: geochemist Rolf Kipfer and environmental physicist Matthias Brennwald from the "Water Resources and Drinking Water" department. Together with their colleagues from the ETH Zurich, they carried out six controlled fracture experiments in 2017. They pressed a liquid mixture of water and chemicals through boreholes into existing fault zones to create new pathways in the Grimsel rock.
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