Investigation on Coating Materials to Enhance Sand Proppant Performance for Sand Production Control

Disclosed herein is review/research for investigations on coating materials to
enhance sand proppant properties exploiting local sand supply, reported methods
of forming resin coated particulates and present invention provides sand
production control using resin coated sands. The objectives of this project are to
determine the desired behavior of local resin coated silica with desired mesh size
of 40/70 sand particles as well as to investigate and analyze the characteristics and
physical properties of the obtained sample of resin coated silica using different
types of resin; Epikote628, Epoxy, Polyester and Vinyl Ester. This research has
been done as a result of the extremely high well maintenance cost due to abrasive
mechanical erosion of downhole equipment during operation by massive sand
productions; meanwhile the limitation of natural sand and delivery period for
current proppant are time consuming which cause a significant delay in oil/gas
yield production. Likewise, current proppants application has met with limited
success due to the reaction of the resin coating in the wellbore. For this particular
project, the scope of study will widely covers but are certainly not limited to the
investigation of coating material for sand proppant, its types and properties, even
so include studies on local sand potential for sand proppant, coating methods,
types of resin and its properties, testing for physical properties of the sample that
will be obtained will be predetermined in this paper. Basically, background of
study of the project covers the feasibility of the project – sufficient supply of local
sand and resins, equipments needed/availability for sample(s) testing, potential of
local sand to be commercialize. Findings trough research/review of books,
journals, patented articles, web site, etc. are been inferred throughout this paper.
The method is applying a coating including the continuous phase resin and nonreactive
sand particles embedded or adhered to the continuous phase. The final
finding is that vinylester resin shows the high potential characteristic of good
resin for application.