Stimulation of gas and oil wells is achieved via hydrofracturing the geological strata, and then propping the fractures open with ceramic aggregates to maintain high permeability paths for resource recovery.  Such aggregates, known as proppants, are derived from sintered aluminosilicates such as bauxite.  Worldwide demand is experiencing dramatic growth as new natural gas plays in the U.S. are developed, resulting in a significant shortage of raw materials available for manufacturing high performance proppants.

Development of proppants from alternative raw materials derived from industrial/domestic waste streams, and which rival the performance of commercial state of the art proppants will be presented.  Research on the use of dopants, ion exchange processing, and controlled devitrification to tailor the mechanical and physical properties of these proppants will be discussed.  Extension of these studies to well drilling cuttings containing Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (NORMS) will be presented.