Unloading Time for a Pneumatic Sand Truck

Jit: Use the aerators for sand. Top air is only for lightweight product, like hydrated quicklime or dolomitic quicklime.

Dustin: Sand is hauled in trailers that have a capacity of 1040 cubic feet. Unloaded through 4" steel pipe and rubber hose by air at 12-15 PSI. Length of push, particularly vertical rise, is the factor that has the greatest impact upon unload time.

Lots of sand haulers here in the Eagle Ford use steel threaded hammer-union fittings, as aluminum just doesn't last in an abrasive environment.

 

ROTFLMAO - You got about as much chance of getting a straight answer about unload times as ya do a truckers income... Good luck with that! Ask 10 pneumatic tanker operators the best/fastest way to unload and you will MOST DEFINITELY get 10 unique answers. Ask them how fast they unload and NONE will admit to over an hour, they will ALL tell you 45 min or less and some will even delusional lay claim to 15 minutes or less. Your one and only certainty is that they're ALL full of #### and there's a good chance none of them actually understand the technical engineering principles of the trailer anyway. No one gets taught how these trailers ACTUALLY work. They're all taught by another operator who trained them, i.e. open valve X this much and valve Y this much, wait for pressure to get to XX then... etc.. Then they pick up some other methods as they are exposed to other operators, eventually they start playing around with valves and experimenting to a point they think is getting the job done as fast as possible and that's what they stick with. They all have a different perspective on how tank and line pressures effect the product flow and many are in complete and total contrast to each other. Hell, there was even one response to your question that compared the abuse the lines and fitting take to sandblasting - a process that has a completely different angle of trajectory with line and tank pressures that are exponentially higher than what a pneumatic tanker does while unloading. Sure they get abused by the abrasive passing of the product but liken it to sandblasting, come on...