Proppant is ball-shape material that keeps fracture open during or following hydraulic fracking treatment. Proppant is used to aid extracting oil and gas out of shale reservoir, because it can increase productivity at low permeability formations by increasing the flow of oil and gas.
 

There mainly are two types of proppant widely used in nowadays market: quartz sand, and ceramic sand, or sintered bauxite.

What is ceramic proppant (frac sand)?

Ceramic proppant is sintered from mineral bauxite ore, and mixed with other additives. The chemical composition of ceramic proppant is mainly aluminum oxide, silicate and iron or titanium oxide. 

Due to its chemical composition and sintered procedure, ceramic proppant is much stronger than quartz sand. Meanwhile, ceramic proppant is generally in uniform round shape than quartz as well. Therefore, all these features makes ceramic proppant a better proppant than quartz: not only the better ISO/ API crush resistant rate, but also the long-term conductivity and permeability. 

As report shown, the more stimulation stage, the more ceramic proppant used, the lower the wellhead breakeven price will be, though more ceramic proppant used means higher well cost. All of these means better EUR (Estimated Ultimate Recovery) and ROI (Return of Interest).

Henan Dajia Mining Machinery Co., Ltd mainly design, produce and install oil proppant plant (frac sand production line). Contact with me if need or interested in our machine.