Bulk Material Transfer Blog

The kind of transloading equipment that is needed for handling the different type of bulk supplies industry needs to keep their production going are specific in nature. Some of the different types of equipment are commonly used in other places, but having them all assembled in one place so any type of rail car can be unloaded in an efficient manner is what makes the difference.

The purpose of this equipment is to transfer large volumes of bulk material from rail cars to tractor trailers or vise verse in an efficient manner that is safe for the workers and does not damage the merchandise in any measurable degree.

To do this the first piece of equipment that is needed is the transloading station. This is a facility that is purpose built to transfer goods and commodities between rail to road. This facility has to have a rail line running to it along with access to main roads in the community where it is located.

To off load bulk commodities from hopper rail cars, mobile conveyors are necessary. They need to be mobile since it is easier and more efficient to move them than the entire line of railcars. There are also mobile cranes that are used to lift the containers off the rail cars and load them onto waiting flatbed trucks.

The use of pumps and pneumatics are also necessary to transfer liquid goods from one location to another. Forklifts and small trucks are used to offload goods that are being transported by pallets.

All of these things are common in the world of business, but only brought together at a transloading station. By using transloading equipment in an efficient manner your products can be safely transported to their final destination at a lower cost more efficiently.

When it comes to shale fracking, there are some important components that make this procedure a success. One of them is the horizontal drilling approach to the wellbore. This allows for a great amount of surface area of the shale rock bed to be exposed to the pressure and fracking medium.

The greater the area exposed, the more the fracking of the rock bed will occur with less effort by the crew. Less effort can be equated as less time for the process to be a success. Like all businesses, natural gas and oil exploration is done to increase the revenue stream of those sponsoring the well. The faster it is completed, the sooner the crew can move onto the next well.

One factor in the extraction process of the energy reserve that is trapped in the shale rock bed is the ease at which the shale is fractured and the size of these fractures. To deal with the different size fractures in the wellbore, there are a 3 different mediums that are added to the slurry to keep these fractures open.

The most common is crystalline silica (sand) or quartz. This material is insoluble in water and has a specific gravity of 2.65. The melting point of this material is 1710 C which is how it withstands the pressure that is exerted in the wellbore without changing form.

This frac sand is also coated with a polymer resin when the fracture openings in the wellbore are needed to be slightly larger. This medium has a higher crush level and makes the sand particles rounder for more penetration than the irregular shapes sand particles.

The last type is the ceramics or polycrystalline alumina mixed with glass ceramics. The ceramics have the highest melting points which reach up to 4000 C. This medium is the roundest of all the fracking material, which allows for maximum penetration.

Immaterial of which one is used for shale fracking, they all serve the same purpose. To hold open the cracks to allow the natural gas or oil to permeate through the fissure so it can be collected at the surface of the wellbore.

The Marcellus horizontal drilling is legal and practical due to the way the formation of shale rock has formed. When a drilling company just drills straight down, or what is called vertical drilling, their borehole only intersects the shale layer that is a small and limited area.

The shale layer in the Marcellus shale region is not vertical but horizontal, like nearly all layers of the earth’s mantle. The horizontal drilling is vertical drilling at the top, but a directional drill head changes the course and direction of the borehole during the drilling process.

The main advantage of this process is that a greater area of the shale rock bed is exposed in the borehole. This increases the possibilities of the drilling to intersect with a natural gas pocket. Because of this increased area of exposure when fracking is needed to increase the amount of natural gas or oil from the shale rock bed, a better result is achieved.

The secondary advantage is that multiple boreholes can be started on the same platform, but go in different directions. This allows for more underground area that can be covered without a greater impact on the surface environment.

Horizontal drilling is accomplished by starting a vertical shaft downward. As the hole is being drilled, the direction is guided sideways. This is not a 90-degree turn like on a street, but a slow curving arch that could take hundreds of feet before the corner is achieved.

With this style of drilling, most wells are capable of extracting up to 5 times more natural gas and oil than with a vertical borehole alone. The time it takes to drill a horizontal well is comparable to a vertical well, which is only 30 to 45 days. The time is dependent on the depth the well is to penetrate to.

In the region of Marcellus, horizontal drilling is the most common and economically practical application for the extraction of natural gas and oil from below the surface.

The fracking methods that are deployed by the natural gas and oil explorers only involve two similar kinds. There is hydrofracking and propane fracking. Both use a similar slurry of frac sand and surfactant of about 0.5% of the overall components, but the main component is where the difference lies.

Hydrofracking involves the use of water as the main fluid source. This is a known substance that is non-toxic and non-hazardous to use and work with. This method involves a slurry mixture of 99.5% water and the remainder consisting of frac sand and surfactants. This slurry is pumped down into the borehole of the well at 100 barrels a minute, and the fracking pressure can be as high as 15,000 psi to crack the rock bed below. The fracking medium is recovered after the rock bed is cracked. The water returns to the surface and is held in a collection pond close to the borehole.

Propane fracking involves the same components but instead of water, a LPG in gel form is used. This, too, is non-hazardous and non-toxic while it is in gel form. Once it becomes a gas, there is a flammability issue that has to be addressed. The main difference is the way the medium is recovered. The LPG gel evaporates after the pressure is released, and the gas is contained in a tank instead of a pond.

This procedure has been used for over 60 years in the natural gas and oil exploration. What most people are unaware of is that it has other uses that have been deployed for the same amount of time. The most common is the use of fracking to stimulate a groundwater well. There has been some debate over the use of hydrofracking and what it is doing to the ground water, but they forget this is the method that is used to keep old water wells functioning.

Other uses include the use of fracking to help carve out mines, and for the tunnel construction for roads and railroads. This is a far safer method than with the use of dynamite.

The fracking methods that are being deployed today have many beneficial uses that include more than just extending the recovery efforts of the natural gas and oil wells.

The purpose of a sand transload facility is to provide a safe and effective manner in which to transfer the bulk commodity of frac sand from rail cars to over the road tractor trailers. This is so the frac sand can be delivered to the natural gas and oil wells where they will be used in the hydrofracking procedure.

Since all rail cars have a demurrage associated with them once they reach their destination. A fast and efficient means of offloading the bulk commodities that are transported by railcars is needed. This is done at a facility that has the proper equipment to do the job.

This equipment has to include several portable conveyers that can take to frac sand from the railcars and move it in a safe and efficient manner to an awaiting tractor trailer. By having designated equipment just for this purpose, the chances of accidental contamination is also greater reduced.

To have a facility like this, there must be access to the rail lines and major roads in areas where the material that is being transported will be used. These facilities are purpose built for just this reason. They are also manned 24 hours a day 7 days a week because the need to offload the railcars could occur at any time.

In a facility like what has been described, the offloading of a rail car can occur within less than 1 hour. The more conveyers they have on site, the less time it will take to offload the shipment of frac sand so it can continue its journey to its final destination.

If you are in need of the services a frac sand transload facility has to offer, then look in the vicinity of your wellbore. There is a third party provider of this service in most areas where exploration of natural gas and oil is being conducted.

For more information click on the link to Tran-Z

American natural gas shale deposits are in several regions of the nation. The best known is the Marcellus Shale Deposit that covers the states of New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio. To a lesser extent, the states Maryland and Virginia, along with Lake Erie, also have a limited amount under them.

Right next to the Marcellus deposit is the Devonian Shale Deposit that reaches from Ohio in the north, to Tennessee in the south. These two together are the largest deposits in the nation, with estimated 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas deposits in the shale rock bed.

The second largest region is the Barnett Shale Deposit in northern Texas. This deposit covers 17 counties including the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. Other significant deposits are the Haynesville Shale Deposit in the northwestern portion of Louisiana, and Fayetteville Shale Deposit in Arkansas.

There are other smaller deposits in Wyoming, Utah, Kansas, Oklahoma, Illinois, and Michigan, each one with proven reserves that is currently being tapped. What has slowed the recovery of these deposits is the drop in the price of natural gas.

The decline in prices is not due to a reduction in the demand for this domestic natural resource, but the plentiful supply of it. This in turn has reduced the profit potential of recovering this type of deposit.

Unlike other reservoirs, horizontal drilling must occur with fracking the wells to recover natural gas from the shale deposits. This has slowed the recovery of the natural gas from these regions slightly.

European countries are starting to venture into the US market with interest in our natural gas deposits. Their reliance on Russian gas has been problematic for years, so a switch to America is gaining strength.

This should not be a worry since the American natural gas shale deposits are large enough to last America with over 100 years of this energy reserve, we will not be running out any time soon.

It might be possible for bulk material transfer to occur without the proper equipment, but the costs and time will be greatly affected. For this reason alone, most companies in many industries use specialists when this need arises in their business.

The easiest and most efficient way to transport bulk material is by doing so in large quantities. The greatest quantities can be transported by ships and barges. Since most factories and industrial sites are not near or on a waterway, there must be an efficient means by which the bulk material can be transported overland.

The choices for this task are limited to only two possibilities, and they are railcar and truck. In the past, our forefathers only had the rail lines at their disposal. Because of this, there are railroad lines located near almost every major waterway across America. The necessary equipment to conduct the transfer of bulk material is present at these locations to make this transfer not only possible, but done in an efficient manner.

Many manufacturers have private rail lines running to their facilities, but not in every case. To service the factories that do not have rail lines, and other temporary facilities like natural gas and oil wells that need bulk supplies of materials over the road, trucks are used.

To fill the need of bulk transfer from rail cars to trucks, the transloading facilities were built. These facilities are located on the major rail lines that are situated near major roads so easy access to both modes of transportation can be accomplished.

At transloading facilities, the bulk transfer can occur in an efficient manner in both cost and time. This is possible because the proper equipment and know how to accomplish this task are present by these industrial professionals.

This is the current path for the lowest cost and shortest time span for bulk material transfer to occur, and assist the American industrial machine so it can keep moving.

The Marcellus shale region in the north eastern portion of the United States is the largest deposit of its kind in the hemisphere. This deposit is nothing new. It was discovered in the 1800’s but due to the need for a new type of tapping into the rock layer (horizontal drilling) and the abundance of reservoirs of natural gas that were easier to extract, this region was not developed until recently.

This layer of shale rock is 400 million years old. It is deep ocean sediment that was deprived of oxygen during the Devonian period in the Paleozoic era. This was a period in time when there was a mass extinction of life in the oceans and the shale rock beds around the world are the results.

The reason scientists have concluded for this formation to be found in multiple places around the globe is due to the very active tectonic plate movement of the period. It has been determined that the Appalachian Mountains in America along with the Caledonian Mountains in Great Britain and Scandinavia were created and rose above sea level when the super continent Pangaea was formed.

The extinction of the marine life that formed this layer is assumed to be from the rising temperature that existed during this period. Most of the world was covered by water and there were no glaciers in this time period. The surface temperature of the water has been estimated to be at 30 C or 86 F.

With this information most people had deduced that the global warming of this early period in earth’s history formed the energy reserves we are extracting today. Since the Marcellus shale region was formed by global warming, this natural fluctuation in the earth’s temperature can’t be all bad.

Click this link to read more about Marcellus Shale Drillers

To be able to handle bulk sand railcar unloading, the right equipment must be on hand. This is unless you have a facility that allows for a truck to be placed under a hopper car. This is impractical in most cases, so the next best way is for a conveyor system to be used.

A portable conveyor is the practical way of offloading a hopper railcar in the safest and most efficient manner. The reason being is that a mobile conveyor assembly can be easily moved from hopper car to hopper car in a matter of minutes. This type of system is easily operated by just one person.

This type of device works by placing an open chute below the hopper car’s discharge opening located at the center bottom of the railcar. The conveyor belt is then extended at a 45-degree angle up, which discharges over the opening of a hopper trailer that is pulled by a semi truck.

This type of offloading is fast and secure. Since there is no intermediate transfer point, the chances of contamination are greatly reduced.

The speed at which one of these mobile conveyors can load a tractor trailer with 20 tons of sand is approximately 10 to 15 minutes. Since a railcar holds up to 100 tons, this means a single car can be unloaded nearly every hour with just one mobile conveyor. The more conveyors a transloading station has, the faster the train can be unloaded.

There are some stations that employ 3 such mobile devices and can handle 300 tons of sand an hour. This is equivalent to 15 tractor trailers ready for delivery of the bulk sand.

This process of bulk sand railcar unloading is done most efficiently in time and cost at a transloading station that employs a mobile conveyor belt.

Propane fracking is the new alternative to hydrofracking. Both processes have the same goal in mind. This goal is to open up the rock bed below the surface to allow more of the trapped hydrocarbons to be released, so they can be recovered.

A part of the process that both have in common is that they alternative to hydrofracking. By applying pressure to the well with a slurry medium, fissures are formed in the rock bed and the sand filters into the cracks. When the pressure is released, the sand remains behind to keep the fissures open. These openings allow for the trapped oil and natural gas to escape which can be recovered at the surface. In most cases, before the slurry mixture is introduced to the well, an acid solution is deposited into the well to soften up the rock bed.

In hydrofracking, the slurry consists mainly of water and sand along with some hydrocarbons, if the well master deems it necessary. In propane fracking, the slurry consists of a specially prepared gel that is made up of liquid propane and sand. Both of these slurries do the same job to the same degree. The difference between them is the recovery of the slurry mixture.

With hydrofracking, the slurry is recovered over a period of days. The water and sand mixture is channeled to a settling pond nearby. Between 25% and 82% of this slurry is recovered from a well.

The propane fracking process has a higher rate of recovery, nearly 100%. This is because the liquid propane turns to a gas and is easily collected at the well bore. This recovery generally takes less than a day so the production at the well can commence with a shorter delay than with hydrofracking.

Click here to read a previous post on propane fracking.