What is Proppant Storage?
Our team at Keystone Oilfield Fabrication LLC has extensive experience in designing and building oilfields, and we are here to help you create the ideal solutions for your oil operation. One of the many things we can help you with is proppant storage for hydrocarbon production. In this article, we’ll provide a brief overview of what proppant storage is and how it works.
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What is Proppant?
Before we can explain proppant storage, we first need to define the term proppant. A proppant is a solution made of sand or other particulate matter suspended in water or fluid. Proppants are used in hydraulic fracturing—specifically, they are used to hold fissures open after a fracturing treatment.
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Types of Proppant Storage
When people talk about proppant storage, they are usually referring to storage facilities for the sand (or other particulate) rather than to the fluid. There are two main types of proppant storage: flat storage and silo storage.
- Flat Proppant Storage – As the name suggests, in flat proppant storage, sand is stored on a flat plane. Storing your proppant this way allows you to keep large quantities of sand on hand, and it makes it easier to load the sand and send it out. However, this storage method does require more space, so it may not be the best choice for smaller operations.
- Silo Proppant Storage – On the other hand, silo proppant storage uses vertical silos to house sand. This method of storage uses considerably less space than flat storage, but it does make it harder to fill up shipments of sand, which can create a bottleneck in your production and slow things down.
Frac Sand and Proppant Size and Shape
The shape of the proppant is important because shape and size influence the final permeability through the fracture. A wide range of particle sizes and shapes will lead to a tight packing arrangement, reducing permeability/conductivity. A controlled range of sizes and preferential spherical shape will lead to greater conductivity. The roundness has been historically analyzed using a visual, manual method based on the chart shown in the figure below, originally developed by Krumbein and Sloss. This method results in large subjective differences from operator to operator.
Chart for visual estimation of sphericity (y-axis) and roundness (x-axis)
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How Does Custom Proppant Sand Fabrication Work?
Custom proppant sand fabrication involves creating proppants tailored to specific requirements of hydraulic fracturing operations. The process begins with selecting high-quality raw materials such as bauxite or kaolin clay. These materials are then ground into fine particles and mixed with binders to form a slurry.
The slurry undergoes pelletization, where it is formed into spherical pellets and then dried. These pellets are heated in kilns to a high temperature, transforming them into high-strength proppants with optimal sphericity and roundness. This precise manufacturing process ensures that the proppants can hold open fractures effectively, enhancing oil and gas extraction.
To learn more about custom proppant sand fabrication, custom proppant sand fabrication details various crucial aspects of the process.
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