Sorry dude,,, I was trying to cut out some of the details to make it somewhat shorter."SO" stands for Sizing Operator. "STS" stands for "Super Transsometinudder System"
I can't remember what the "T" stands for. But I remember when I was told I was like.
It's a huge word. Anyway,,
We make "proppant". We take bauxite (a dirt with high alumina,,or aluminum) and we mill it to a powder in a ball mill. Then STS takes that powder and mixes it with a little water and some binder (glue) in huge mixers. to form itty bitty balls, smaller than bb's. Actually it looks like sand.
I've been told that these mixers are like the ones they use
in cereal manufacturing.(like cocoa puffs and life) But only
more heavy duty. We run samples on the size of it there to make sure we don't send a bunch of stuff thats too big or too small to the kiln.
Then they run it through a huge rotating kiln, that looks like a 16' wide steel pipe about 200' long. That has a flame shooting through it that cooks the proppant at about
1400* C. The firebrick in the kiln have small cracks that
the proppant falls into and as it rotates and those cracks
get to the top the proppant rolls out of the cracks and fall
through the fire, cooking it.
It's a on going process, raw feed is always being put in the
upper end (unless something breaks down, which causes all kinds of hell) and a cooked product comes out of lower end. I say upper and lower, there is a very slight grade
(unlevelness) to the kiln. But mainly the cooked product
is pushed out by adding raw material at the upper end.
Then after it's cooked it goes to sizing. That's where Mr.WASO is. The cooked product goes into a huge tank that distributes it onto some rotex's. Yeah I know,, It's a
machine that has several different sizes of screen mats
about 3' wide and 10' long that shake back and forth making the product fall thru the screen or roll down the screen to then be sent to the finish tanks or trash. If it's too big,or tooo small,it's trashed (which we don't have much of).
It's something else to try and explain. People ask me all the time, what I do. And as you can see,,,it's almost unexplainable.
We make several different sizes to sell. I don't know if you know anything about screen sizing, yeah like window screen. But they make it in all different sizes. Basically a #20 screen has 20 holes per square inch. #40 screen has 40 holes per square inch and so on. We make one size called 20/40,, there's nothing in
it that will not fit thru a #20 screen and nothing smaller than what fits thru a #40. Same with 12/18,,16/30 and so on.
I guess I should say what we use it for. They use it mainly in gas wells.(and some oil wells) They mix it with drilling fluids and put it down in the well and push it down into the earth with about 10,000 lbs of pressure. Forcing it into cracks and crevices down in the well and make new cracks and crevices even. That's called "fracturing" or "fracking" you may have heard of it. The proppant stays in the cracks and crevices to actually keep it propped open, while gas and water leave the well,hence the name "proppant"
It's wild,, the plant we work in looks like there's a dust storm going on 24/7/365.
When people ask me what I do,, I usually tell em,, I take dirt, mill it, form it, cook it, size it, then put it back in the earth. The stuff is tough,, a little bit on a concrete floor is like walking on ice. It just rolls under your shoes. Hope
that explains things a little better
If you're still baffled checkout some of these
proppant