Scaling Up the Production of Nanocomposite Resin Coated Sand Particles from Laboratory to Industrial Scale

Abstract

Sand, a naturally occurring granular material primarily composed of SiO₂, serves as a common proppant in hydraulic fracturing operations. Proppants play a crucial role in maintaining fractures open, allowing hydrocarbon production by withstanding reservoir closure stresses and ensuring high conductivity. Despite its abundance and cost-effectiveness, natural sand must meet stringent criteria to withstand the harsh downhole conditions. For polycrystalline sand particles containing high in situ impurities, a strengthened coating is essential to enhance crush resistance. This coating prevents microparticles from being crushed under higher closure stress. In the context of fracturing a single well with multiple stages, several thousand tons of proppants are required. Therefore, the strengthening technology must be both cost-competitive and economically viable for scaling up from laboratory to industrial production. In this study, we present a cost-competitive nanocomposite resin coating technology scaled up from laboratory to industrial scale. This technology combines a novel nanomaterial-based reinforcing agent with a surface wettability-altering agent. The resulting coated sand exhibits improved crush resistance strength, API (American Petroleum Institute) conductivity, chemical resistance, and durability. The development process began in the laboratory, where we optimized the technology using batch sizes ranging from 150 g to 1 kg. Subsequently, we conducted pilot production in an industrial proppant coating plant, coating 48000 kg of sand with an approximate batch size of 1100 kg. Finally, we successfully produced 6250 US tons of coated sand using a larger batch size of 1360 kg. Throughout the entire scale-up process, the performance of the coated sand remained consistent. The synergistic effects introduced by the nanoreinforcing, and wettability-altering agents contributed to its robustness, making it suitable for practical application in hydraulic fracturing.