Cercast ht

[aessinus]

18 hours ago, Frosty said:

Good deal, I'm always looking for useful or interesting info. Know any good stories? Tall tales are good.

Frosty The Lucky.

So while I was trying to get my new lil' anvil  up to temp for quench, I got to thinking about what we use at work for epoxy laminate thickener.  Glass microballoons, so tiny they feel like rubbing talcum powder between your fingers.   btw, 3M's site nav blows - maybe that's why we use a local vendor of a different manufacturer....  Just where I looked 1st.

Per 3M data sheet:  "Thermal Stability Appreciable changes in bubble properties may occur above 1112°F (600°C) depending on temperature and duration of exposure" 

Just so you don't think it leaked out of my boots, here's the link to the data sheet that I finally located http://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/91049O/3m-glass-bubbles-k-s-and-im-series.pdf   .  

Anyhoo, reckon the little spheres would stabilize a refractory some & slow the HT without messing with surface durability much?

[ThomasPowers]

does anyone still make aluminum oxide proppants for fracking?  Higher temp rating...

[Frosty]

I imagine glass microballs would feel like the glass retroreflective spheres that go into highway striping paint. You should see the fun if someone spills even a little bit on a linoleum floor. The vacuum filled(?) spheres in refractories like Kast-O-Lite bubble aliumina aren't glass they're high alumina ceramic so are as stable as the refractory itself.

You have me curious though, I don't understand what you mean by hollow spheres "stabilizing" the refractory. Lowering it's thermal conductivity is a given.

Thanks for an entirely new term Thomas, I'd never even considered frack propping let alone heard of it. Now I'm just dieing to use it in conversation. And if anyone is wondering I consider a LOT of things I've never heard of or anyone has imagined. I'm always just a bit taken aback when I discover someone else thinking the same unimagined, unheard of thing. I mean REALLY, what a bunch of Frack proppers!

Frosty The Lucky.

[Steamboat]

12 minutes ago, Frosty said:

I'd never even considered frack propping let alone heard of it. Now I'm just dieing to use it in conversation. And if anyone is wondering I consider a LOT of things I've never heard of or anyone has imagined. I'm always just a bit taken aback when I discover someone else thinking the same unimagined, unheard of thing. I mean REALLY, what a bunch of Frack proppers!

Frosty The Lucky.

"Proppant" is an important word to know if you're attending a proppant convention and want to blend in with the crowd.

[ThomasPowers]

Geology was the career I wanted; I've had several others since then...there was a Proppant manufacturer near my Grandfather's land in AR at one time;  Ottawa Sand was the "traditional" proppant used way back when...

[aessinus]

55 minutes ago, Frosty said:

You have me curious though, I don't understand what you mean by hollow spheres "stabilizing" the refractory. Lowering it's thermal conductivity is a given.

Sorry, boss, was referring to an alternative for Lattacino's SS "refractory reinforcement" needles...  Even at the forge I couldn't get rid of that mental image.

[Steamboat]

We had a 600-foot well drilled and hydrofractured some years back, and I suppose they must have used a proppant to keep the fractures open, since it continued to flow at the 'prop'er rate the next time it was tested.

I would imagine that proppant granules must have to be pretty tough to avoid being crushed by the natural tendency of the fractured rock to close up again.

Steamboat

[Frosty]

Oh MY this is turning into an entertaining thread! Lets see, where to start a convention proppant is the sober guy, right? Be careful pulling the string on your party propper!

Is that a water well Steamboat? I've never heard of fracking the strata for water. They do however perforate the drill casing until recently with explosives sort of a linear claymore thing, more recently with a hydraulic casing punch.

I sincerely wish to offer Thomas Props for a fun vocabulary lesson! Too bad it's not Friday, I could say "Just the fracks maam."

Frosty The Lucky.

[Steamboat]

2 hours ago, Frosty said:

Is that a water well Steamboat? I've never heard of fracking the strata for water. They do however perforate the drill casing until recently with explosives sort of a linear claymore thing, more recently with a hydraulic casing punch.

Frosty The Lucky.

Actually, hydrofracturing water wells is done quite a bit in our neck of the woods. Many drillers here can perform that service. And yes, it's a water well, but it's drilled into bedrock and there's no casing at all except for a short length at the surface. The yield was pretty low right after it was drilled, and as I recall, they dropped a packer into the well and pressurized the appropriate portion of the well to around 3,000 to 4,000 psi, with the idea of widening and/or cleaning any existing fractures to increase the flow rate, which it did. I think it tripled the flow rate.

As to "proppant," since I probably won't be attending any proppant conventions or cocktail parties, I might at least be able to put the term to use in a Scrabble game the next time I'm blessed with a couple of P's and maybe a blank tile. A new vocabulary word like this is 'prop'ably a good example of incidental learning.

Steamboat

[Frosty]

Oh yeah, putting 3,000-4,000psi to a water packer will spread or fracture the strata alright. We used to do water packer tests to determine the bedrock porosity for bridge, etc. foundations and were absolutely forbidden to exceed the total head pressure. The weight of the water column from ground level to the packer. All we did was log the flow rate and do our level best NOT to disturb the subsoils.

We only did water packer tests where we were penetrating strata and they needed to know if there was a potential water flow that could effect a foundation. We targeted the packers to test individual joints between strata. Imagine what would happen if we put even 10 psi on a joint that has maybe a couple thousand square yards of face? 10psi is  more than 6 tons of lift per sq yard. There are stories about blowing the sides off hills and canyon walls doing water packers.

No, I didn't drill wells, I was a soils exploration guy. We have a well though.

Dang, I'm tapped for proppant puns.

Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

I once worked a well where they inadvertently fracked it: a hand fell asleep at the Bar Hopper, (barite used to increase the weight of the drilling "mud"), and ran the mud weight up till it fracked a formation and disappeared.  Unfortunately we were running about 20' of gas flare already and so knew that a lot of natural gas wanted to climb out of that hole and *play* and the only thing keeping it polite had  been the head of drilling mud.  I was the first to notice it as the flare had gone out and I figured it just needed relighting. So I called to my partner to call up to the drilling floor and let them know.

I went on to check my trotline and on my way back I saw my partner,, famed for his slow amble,  *running* across the pad.  All nonessential personnel were moved off site, all cars, I got to sit in the Driller's company pickup and block the road to the well for everything but mud trucks.  Hair's Breadth of disaster!

[Charles R. Stevens]

Now talk about plausible deniability! "No, Honey I was at work" or "No, Honey I was fishing"...

I do like how Thomas covers all the bases 

[ThomasPowers]

Working in the oil patch I was generally a 3 hour drive from my apartment in OKC; generally worked a 12 on 12 off shift 7 days a week so If I went home I ended up way short of sleep.  So I bought an ex phone company van, insulated it and put in a platform that held a mattress and generally camped out.  (I got a nontaxable per diem that I banked which is what I lived on when the crash hit in '83 and we were all out of work.  Allowed me to spend a year working with a swordmaker for no pay too.)  Anyway when camping out I would try to find a local place to run a trotline for panfish or cats; ate wild plums. Got cold in the winter and hot in the summer.  Good years when you are young and an introvert!

[Steamboat]

1 hour ago, Frosty said:

Oh yeah, putting 3,000-4,000psi to a water packer will spread or fracture the strata alright. We used to do water packer tests to determine the bedrock porosity for bridge, etc. foundations and were absolutely forbidden to exceed the total head pressure. The weight of the water column from ground level to the packer. All we did was log the flow rate and do our level best NOT to disturb the subsoils.

We only did water packer tests where we were penetrating strata and they needed to know if there was a potential water flow that could effect a foundation. We targeted the packers to test individual joints between strata. Imagine what would happen if we put even 10 psi on a joint that has maybe a couple thousand square yards of face? 10psi is  more than 6 tons of lift per sq yard. There are stories about blowing the sides off hills and canyon walls doing water packers.

No, I didn't drill wells, I was a soils exploration guy. We have a well though.

Dang, I'm tapped for proppant puns.

Frosty The Lucky.

I can't remember the specific pressure they used with the packer, but it does seem like it was a few thousand psi. I would guess that deeper wells in tight formations probably require higher pressures for hydrofracturing.

I think I'm at the end of the "proppant" thing, too. And I should also clarify my previous post a bit: I am likely to go to the usual brand of cocktail parties, where dropping the term "proppant" would only generate an empty stare...

Returning to the subject of castable refractories, I recently obtained some Kast-O-Lite 30 LI insulating castable refractory and began working up some protective liners or sleeves that I plan to install in the front entry and rear pass-through ports of the gas forge that I'm building, mainly to keep the steel around the ports from getting really hot, but also to provide a more durable insulating material around the ports. I'm planning to post that particular casting experience shortly in a new thread in the gas forges section.

Steamboat

[Frosty]

Sounds like a young mans game Thomas. With the current bust in the oil fields there are or were motor homes being abandoned in job lots in the . . . Dakotas? Wrecking yards were filling up and they couldn't tow and crush them fast enough to pay shipping on the scrap. Or so the news and internet said. I kept telling Deb we should take a little trip and see if we could find something for salvage price we could tool around the lower 48 in but no joy.

I did enough cold camping as a young buck, I got really good at it but still. I like my bed and a thermostat.

When we did a water packer it was for an entirely different reason than opening up strata so water can flow. A few thousand psi in a drill hole isn't near the lifting capacity as tens of lbs. on thousands of sq yards. Different jobs entirely. We were logging how fast water can flow through joints. Your guys were TRYING to break the strata. They used to pull the steel drop in a couple hundred lbs of explosives, fill the hole with water and fire the charge to fracture the strata.

I've tinkered a NA ribbon that is stable so my next step is to cast a ribbon with Kast-O-Lite 30 and build it a forge. I've been holding off on the new forge till I get the burner winkled out. I could just go with the single tube T burner but I'd like to try something new. If the cast ribbon burner works I'll have to weld up and line it a proppant.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Steamboat]

7 hours ago, Frosty said:

When we did a water packer it was for an entirely different reason than opening up strata so water can flow. A few thousand psi in a drill hole isn't near the lifting capacity as tens of lbs. on thousands of sq yards. Different jobs entirely. We were logging how fast water can flow through joints. Your guys were TRYING to break the strata. They used to pull the steel drop in a couple hundred lbs of explosives, fill the hole with water and fire the charge to fracture the strata.

I've tinkered a NA ribbon that is stable so my next step is to cast a ribbon with Kast-O-Lite 30 and build it a forge. I've been holding off on the new forge till I get the burner winkled out. I could just go with the single tube T burner but I'd like to try something new. If the cast ribbon burner works I'll have to weld up and line it a proppant.

Frosty The Lucky.

I understand the basic fluid mechanics and different purposes involved, although I'd propose a slight modification to what you said in your post. For my water well, the drillers were trying to clean out or widen existing breaks in the strata (the ones that already had a bit of water flow), rather than trying to break the strata (create new breaks). Perhaps that's what you meant; I just thought I'd clarify it a bit. It's one of those little obsessive things that stems from having labored as a tech writer way back in the Paleoproterozoic Era or thereabouts. 

I could be all wet when it comes to hydrofracturing water wells, but my non-expert take on it is that the pressure and volume required would probably depend on things like strata depth, strata type and tightness, number of existing fractures, and the area within existing fractures that would be exposed to high-pressure hydrofracturing water/fluid, etc. Lots of variables involved. I'll leave it to the drillers to figure it out.

I'd love to see your naturally aspirated ribbon burner design. I've been reading up on them a bit, and I'm intrigued by some of the advantages they offer, as well as some of the design challenges they present. It's also a good opportunity to experiment with some different casting methods and materials.

Steamboat

10 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

I once worked a well where they inadvertently fracked it: a hand fell asleep at the Bar Hopper, (barite used to increase the weight of the drilling "mud"), and ran the mud weight up till it fracked a formation and disappeared.  Unfortunately we were running about 20' of gas flare already and so knew that a lot of natural gas wanted to climb out of that hole and *play* and the only thing keeping it polite had  been the head of drilling mud.  I was the first to notice it as the flare had gone out and I figured it just needed relighting. So I called to my partner to call up to the drilling floor and let them know.

I went on to check my trotline and on my way back I saw my partner,, famed for his slow amble,  *running* across the pad.  All nonessential personnel were moved off site, all cars, I got to sit in the Driller's company pickup and block the road to the well for everything but mud trucks.  Hair's Breadth of disaster!

Yikes! That was a scary enough experience to induce most people to take a desk job.

Steamboat

[arkie]

13 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

I once worked a well where they inadvertently fracked it: a hand fell asleep at the Bar Hopper, (barite used to increase the weight of the drilling "mud"), and ran the mud weight up till it fracked a formation and disappeared.  Unfortunately we were running about 20' of gas flare already and so knew that a lot of natural gas wanted to climb out of that hole and *play* and the only thing keeping it polite had  been the head of drilling mud.  I was the first to notice it as the flare had gone out and I figured it just needed relighting. So I called to my partner to call up to the drilling floor and let them know.

I went on to check my trotline and on my way back I saw my partner,, famed for his slow amble,  *running* across the pad.  All nonessential personnel were moved off site, all cars, I got to sit in the Driller's company pickup and block the road to the well for everything but mud trucks.  Hair's Breadth of disaster!

Thomas, I had an experience just the opposite of yours.  Went out on a logging run on a deep well in S. Texas.  They were drilling out from under protection pipe in over-pressure, about 16# mud weight.  All kinds of excitment when I got on location!  Seems as a hand had left a water hose running in the intake side of the Triplex pump and it gradually diluted the mud weight so no one noticed it right away.  Well, when they noticed the well starting to unload, just short of a blowout, all hands on deck, closed the rams, got the mud weight back up and killed the well....close call!!!  Got off topic there, sorry.

[ThomasPowers]

Hmm be wary of an old bearded coot wandering around Quad-State in Lederhosen muttering about proper proppants...

Hmm be wary of an old bearded coot wandering around Quad-State in Lederhosen muttering about proper proppants...