Difference in Sand Box & Prop Box????

The sand that is preferred comes from Wisconsin by rail. Something about its size and shape is the best or sandblasting the Earth's core.

But they'll also use other more local sands which are less efficient to use but not so expensive to ship. So a lot of sand gets trucked from railheads like Sanders AZ or ABQ.

Fracking uses massive quantities of material. There are whole rail facilities devoted to delivering sand out in the Permian, built new. Rail is about a million five a mile to put in and they'll build many miles of sidings hoping/knowing they'll make it back.

And then there's liquid nitrogen...

 

It ain't just garden variety sand. The way they use it, it's called a proppant, hence Prop-X. The sand gets in the cracks made by the pressure & props them open.

There are different grades of sand too. Sorted by grain size at the least. There's different additives as well, just not sure if it's in the sand, at the well, or both.

 

So the sand holds open the the cracks made in the shale underground so the oil droplets can flow into well bore. I’ve treated jobs that only called for 250,000 pounds of sand. I’ve also treated jobs that required 4 million pounds, just depends on the customer. There is 200 mesh and 100 mesh sand that has the consistency of flour and cornmeal respectively. Then 30/50 and 40/70. The fine sand is like sad blasting the well bore and the perforations. The two bigger sands prop open the tiny fissures. Sometimes you’ll see resin coated sand but that for very high pressure formations like the three forks that is below the Bakker formation. The sand is mixed with high viscosity friction reducers (kinda like a runny nose type snot). This is called slick water fracking. You can run higher rates when pumping this style. Then you could also use gel which suspends the sand in the mixture so you can run a higher concentration of sand but run a lower rate. Sand in the frac world is called a prop pant. Prop x is liberty oilfield services own brand name kinda like sandbox. Hope that explained it well enough for ya.

 

Isnt it fun when someone spills some HVFR, it rains, then you gotta walk thru it?

 

As others have mentioned, Sandbox, Prop X, pneumatics, all carry same thing. That is various type of sand grade from sand loading facilities or train yards to frac sites. It's just different trailers. All hire O.O. for power only to pull to hook up to different chassis boxes or pneumatics. The box chassis is specifically built for their particular boxes but the pneumatics do not have chassis. So, as an O.O. with power only, the chassis is rented out weekly to pull their chassis, whereas a pneumatics if you buy your own, there is no rental fee.
Frac sand was all done with only pneumatics but with all the silica dust when unloading, they came up with a new way to deliver sand and that's the boxes since that eliminates silica dust. Now, they don't use pneumatics as much and use the boxes instead.

 

Hahaha yeah or someone tried to hide the hvfr with sand and it becomes marshmallow fluff!!
Shoot I Remember running the dry on the fly cross link and going back to the hotel after work and taking a shower....all that powder would hydrate and make standing up impossible! Sometimes if the operator before me didn’t clean the machine right I’d be covered in it....and that night I’d just lay down in the tub with the shower on and sleep till it washed away lol

 

The viper system in my opinion is better than pneumatics and boxes....the haul the sand in hopper bottoms and it is a near zero silica area....silicosis is going to be my generations mesothelioma so all the big operators ( marathon,wpx, xto) are trying to eliminate silica dust altogether. Which forces frac companies to get with the program or dont work

 

I guess that would depend for who.

As a driver, the box system has NO silica dust since it is contained and you're not unloading the sand, just the box on location. The viper, STILL has silica dust since it is unloading the sand directly to the belt on the the ground and the siclica dust flying while you monitor it to unload.

As far as how it gets into the blender after the boxes have been unloaded, I'm not sure how that sand gets from the boxes to the blender. I know with the viper, once it's unloaded on the ground it goes into their viper boxes and the sand is then sent to the blender via a belt. I would imagine with boxes, you would have to put it on a belt to get it in the blender as well. So, it would be similar amount of dust with belt or boxes if that's the case.

 

On sand box and prop x it’s a belt system to get to the blender viper as well. Arrows up there’s no belt it all gravity. With the viper (this is from the supervisor and frac hand side) it is all contained and after 2 independent test on a marathon location (one paid for by marathon and one paid for by frac company I worked for) the silica monitors showed trace amounts at the blender and none at the well head. Idk about the dude unloading at the viper but that was the only system that we allowed frac hands at the blender and blender hopper to not wear a respirator. And it’s so much easier and quieter because they unload way off and I didn’t have to hear that dang pneumatic blower lol