American Oil and Gas Reporter - August 2020 - 52

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SpecialReport: Fracturing Technology

System Eliminates Frac Sand Drying
By Ian Wilson,
Brian Dorfman,
Matt Oehler
and Kevin Fisher
DENVER-The typical horizontal well
in Permian Basin tight oil resource plays
now consumes more than 13 million
pounds of frac sand on average. As perwell average proppant consumption has
increased, a steady stream of technological
and operational advancements has been
introduced to optimize transport, storage
and delivery capabilities to get more sand
to each well site in less time in order to
keep pace with the frac pumps.
The supply chain has been revolutionized by in-basin mines and last-mile
logistical solutions such as mobile containers. These changes put the source of
supply in close proximity to the well, remove bottlenecks to moving sand from
the mine to the blender hopper, lower the
delivered cost of frac sand, provide a

storage buffer at the pad, reduce noise,
and minimize dust and truck traffic.
The next step in further improving efficiencies and reducing costs eliminates
a common but often overlooked step in
the mining process: drying. Before transferring to the blender and pumping down
hole, mined sand is washed, dried, sieved,
stored and transported to the wellsite.
Drying involves a combination of decanting (allowing water from the washing
process to naturally drain and the sand to
air dry in a pile), followed by handling
operations to feed the sand into a kiln.
A new approach uses patent-pending
equipment to screen, transport, deliver
and meter wet sand from local in-basin
mines to the frac blender, bypassing the
drying process altogether. Wet sand in
this application is defined as sand with a
moisture content between 1% and 10%
by weight. Frac sand historically has
been dried prior to transporting to reduce
its weight and improve ease of handling.

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52 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

A container carrying 25,000 pounds of
sand that is 3% wet by weight translates
to 24,250 pounds of net sand load and
750 pounds of water.
Drying operations introduce operational
bottlenecks and adds incremental cost to
each ton delivered. For frac sand mine
operators, the capital and operating expenses for kilns can be considerable, and
drying plants and storage are often limiting
factors in mine output. An added benefit
of eliminating drying is the positive environmental impact of eliminating billions
of Btus of energy needed to fire kilns
and the associated emission reductions.
For oil and gas operators, drying provides
no direct value to well construction, and
once delivered to location, the sand is
reintroduced to water in the frac fluid
anyway.
Wet Sand System
The combination of the transition to
in-basin mines near the point of consump-
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American Oil and Gas Reporter - August 2020

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