I've reposted your other forum to start the ball over again, hope you don't mind. Rebuttals WELCOME as long as they are constructive.
@wsDK_II asked if I could put my posts into a separate thread. So I hope we can keep this thread to purely the science and understanding the goals of LWP. I am not an expert or an advisor in the minerals industry and my articles are simply based on my own personal research. They should be checked and verified by any or all members who read them. They are not given as advice to buy or sell stock.
Ok...with that out of the way I was reading back through all the mash to find some good questions that I could also get my teeth for my own personal research. One of the posters, I suppose you could say was lamenting over why we didn't seem to have any science guys in here anymore, and the one that was, had sold out after getting the proppant results back from the independent experts.
I had also read that post, and I have unsuccessfully, gone back through literally hundreds of posts to try and find it. From recollection, I think the poster commented on that he was a little disappointed that the 'fine results' weren't as he had hoped. Based on that, I understand he exited.
So to the point of, where are our experts?
Let me first say that when a technology has gone through its research stage and then into development for testing for suitability in industrial settings, you are not going to get a lot of independent chemists/geologists/experts on hydraulic fracking to submit independent analytical reports until the product has actually hit the ground and being used in oil /gas fields. So , in the meantime, we must rely upon progress reports and milestone data that is posted by management during the manufacturing process. Following successful in-house testing we should then be looking for test results posted from independent expert chemical laboratories who specialize in hydraulic fracking and mining to confirm "said" in-house lab data.
In Ecopropp/Coretrack/LWP's case we have seen the progression of the Research to Development (Ecopropp/Coretrack) the Development to Pilotplant manufacturing stage (Coretrack/LWP) and the manufacturing to production stage with confirmed test results (LWP) over an approximate 2 - 3 year period.
So how long does it take to develop a high quality industrial proppant?
I found this interesting article from an industry research and forum group called 'IMFORMED - Industrial Mineral Forums and Research' dated 24 July 2015. Here is a link to the whole article about Ecopropp/Coretrack as well as discussing the whole proppant industry. http://imformed.com/proppant-promise-from-australian-fly-ash/
But to address my question let me post an excerpt from the report written by the author, Mike O'Driscoll.
Ecopropp’s sintering kiln undergoing inspection in December 2014. A ceramic proppant pilot plant, using fly ash as feedstock raw material, is planned to be commissioned in early 2015. Courtesy Ecopropp Pty Ltd
"Ecopropp has filed for patents on its proppants which have also been certified to meet or exceed both the American Petroleum Institute standards and the ISO standards.
Following successful scale-up and down-hole testing, Ecopropp and Coretrack intend to sell technology licenses to third parties to build proppant manufacturing plants using their own funding resources, preferably in close proximity to coal fired power stations and oil and gas resources.
Ecopropp/Coretrack hope to derive additional revenue from ongoing royalty payments for every pound of product produced. The company anticipates that the US market will initially be the major target market. Long term development
Development of alternative raw materials for ceramic proppant manufacture is not a quick fix, is not cheap, and the use of fly ash is not a first.
Oxane Materials, of Houston, has spent the last 20 years developing its “nano-structured” ceramic proppant products, and only started introducing them to the market as recently as 2010.
Not only is it a long process to develop a high performance ceramic proppant, it costs as well. Financing for Oxane’s development has included US$160m invested by the likes of Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips, and Total.
The manufacturing process at Oxane’s Van Buren, Arkansas plant is highly proprietary, involving spray coating a hollow spherical core with a “highly engineered layer of mixed metal oxide”.
However, Oxane has revealed that fly ash, mixed with metal oxides, is used in the coating of the proppant."
So for those who read my report last night will see that developing a product that will have a long life in a multi-billion dollar industry doesn't need to be rushed in any of the initial stages. But the good thing is that all of the hard work is out of the way and we are in the Marketing/get into the field stage and with a low-cost, high strength alternative proppant now available in a depressed minerals sector who are desperate for cost saving technology, it shouldn't be too long before some orders start rolling our way.
So what in the heck are 'Proppant fine results' as mentioned by a previous chemistry guy LWP ex-holder and is our product really up to standard?
I will try and address this as a layman in two parts but with some past experience in water quality testing.
"Proppant fines are the small particles that break off from the proppant grain when submitted to fracture stress. The small broken pieces reduce pack porosity and permeability, and cause major degradation in the conductivity of proppant packs. When proppant fines migrate down the proppant pack toward the well bore, they accumulate and reduce flow capacity." Society of Petroleum Engineers Journal of Petroleum Technology.
In layman terms please. Ok...have you ever had a shower and after a period of a few years eventually notice the water flow is declining and all the holes in the rose look clogged up? Well those blocking agents are the sludgy grains broken off from rocks that have come in from the street pipes. The constant rubbing against each other under high water pressure, causes small pieces or rock salts to break off which eventually fill the holes. Got it!
So what I think our chemist was concerned with was that the formed flyash proppant didn't hold its consistency to high enough pressure standards for his liking, before beginning to degrade and separate.
So is the product any good? Will it do the job it said it would?
Earlier in the article I posted you will see where the originating company Ecopropp had submitted patents on a proppant technology that as stated "either met or exceeded both US Petroleum and ISO industry standards."
Independent tests conducted in both Australia and the US by Global Energy Laboratories in late 2015 and early 2016 confirmed that the LWP flyash proppant met and exceeded industry standards.
LWP's disruptive technology challenges existing market dynamics. Potential Cost Savings per 6,000,000/pound Well
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1
Manufacturer
PrimaryFeedstock
Size
SalePrice(pound)
CompressiveStrength
BulkDensity
Pounds ofproppants
Proppant costper well
$ savingsper well
% savingsper well
2
U.S. manufacturedLight WeightCeramic Proppant
Kaolin Clay
20/40
$0.24
7,500 psi
1.56
6,000,000
$1,440,000
$491,538
-34%
3
U.S. manufacturedIntermediate StrengthCeramic Proppant
Bauxite
20/40
$0.28
10,000 psi
1.88
7,230,769
$2,024,615
$1,076,154
-53%
4
Chinese manufacturedIntermediate StrengthCeramic Proppant
Ecopropp’s sintering kiln undergoing inspection in December 2014. A ceramic proppant pilot plant, using fly ash as feedstock raw material, is planned to be commissioned in early 2015. Courtesy Ecopropp Pty Ltd
