Frac sand's "Thomas Edison dilemma"
Published: Wed, 09/18/13
There was a recent series on the History Channel that absolutely
kicked gluteus maximus.
It was called "The Men That Built America," and it told
the fascinating stories of Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, Thomas
Edison, John D. Rockefeller, and other titans of the industrial
revolution.
As luck would have it, I recently met with the actor that played
Thomas Edison on that series.
He is the son of a friend of mine.
Anyway, the actor and I were talking about how his character ended
up being portrayed in the series.
He said that he grew up with this idea of Edison being the
gentleman's inventor.
So did I.
But in the series, they portrayed lots of character issues with
Edison, including the fact that he totally underestimated one of
his junior engineers, Nikolai Tesla.
Tesla really wanted to push the use of alternating current (AC) for
electrical transmission and distribution.
Edison was utterly opposed to AC, and wanted his direct current
(DC) used everywhere.
Tesla ended up leaving Edison's lab and going with Mr.
Westinghouse to install AC generators at Niagara Falls.
Now, Tesla's ideas about AC were spot on - the electrical grid
grew to use AC as its main mode for transmission and distribution
of electricity.
Edison's goals for DC to be the "cat's meow" for
electrical power didn't happen, but Edison is still widely
known as the electrical genius, and Edison is much more popular
than Tesla.
Edison did create a light bulb that was commercially marketable. I
believe that gave him a bit of a bull head when it came to evenly
evaluating Tesla's ideas for AC.
Anyway, I've ran across something similar in the frac sand
industry.
As you may know, the American Petroleum Institute recommends that
both sphericity and roundness have ratings of 0.6 or higher each
when the test is performed.
Many of my clients have sand where the sphericity rating is high
enough, but the roundness test is less than 0.6 because many grains
of sand have sharp angular corners.
I just got off the phone with an interesting cat.
He is developing a piece of processing machinery that just might be
able to "round" those sharp corners.
If that is the case, some sand that might not have become frac sand
before might be marketable after processing.
Time will tell, but I'm excited about this possibility.
I'm getting a before and after sample soon from my colleague at
the processing equipment manufacturer.
If that equipment can really improve the quality of mediocre sand
to make it frac sand quality, it could totally change the industry!
Imagine a market where suppliers everywhere (like you?) can get
their sand to market once it's processed with this equipment.
Now they might be able to compete against the "big boys"
of frac sand, because of a technological edge.
A bit like the old Edison and Tesla competition. Sweet.
More to come on that equipment.
Time for today's pitch.
Our lab still has the best deal on frac sand testing, in my humble
but accurate opinion.
Full suite of API testing, with really fast turnaround time, for
$1,950. This is for a whole mess o' tests, neatly packaged up
with pretty paper on the outside.
Go here: http://www.globalenergylaboratories.com/