Proppant is a granular material costly oil and gas oil fracturing proppant exploration fracturing used in water conservancy. After deep mining at oil and gas, high pressure low permeability deposit closure after fracturing treatment, the hydrocarbon formation split, passage of oil and gas from the cracks formed in the collection out, then need to inject fluid rock grassroots to exceed formation fracture the intensity of pressure, so that cracks the rock around the wellbore to form a channel having a high level flow capacity, after maintaining fracturing the formation of cracks open, the oil and gas product can be smoothly passed. As the hydraulic mining technology expansion in oil and gas exploration in the field of ceramic proppant global market demand of 450,000 tons from 2003 to 2013 of 3.6 million tons, worth about $ 2.5 billion market.
The traditional ceramic proppant mainly clay and bauxite as starting material. Australia Ecopropp company developed a new proppant products, which mainly byproducts of coal-fired power plant fly ash as raw material from. Currently, the product has passed the authority of the third party testing, fully meet the ISO standards.
According to reports, compared to traditional clay-based proppant and bauxite-based proppants, fly ash-based proppant with good performance and low cost significant advantage. One wide source of raw materials, low prices. Ash-based proppant to waste fired power plant fly ash as raw material, wide range of sources, many areas even free of charge. Second, the pressure fracturing proppants level is high, compared to the kaolin-based proppants 10000 PSI 7500 PSI and bauxite based, fly ash-based proppant pressure rating up to 14000 PSI. Third, low production costs and transportation costs. Ash-based proppant than the other two proppant lighter, and the production process is simple, the production process less chemical consumption, and therefore lower its production costs and transportation costs. Fourth, profit margins, in the same market price, fly ash-based proppant because of its low cost and with greater profit margins.