Malaysian Sand for Proppant

With the rise in hydraulic fracturing applications over the past decade, the market availability of proppants plays a more significant role in the global oilfield economy. As a result, the demand for commercially manufactured proppants is increasing, fueling the construction of new production facilities around the world. Currently, there are only a few numbers of well-known suppliers of manufactured proppants that dominate the business globally. This project aims to study the properties and characteristics of Malaysia local sand for possible use as proppant specifically local sand resourced from Sarawak area. Quality silica sand from certain areas of the Sarawak state was identified in order to collect the sample. This project includes the study on the recent development of proppant characteristics of local sand as compared to the commercial sand as the Ottawa and Brady sand. It is mostly known characteristic of proppant is its conductivity. Generally, the properties of the proppant which affect its conductivity are mainly roundness, size distribution, resistance to crush under the influence of closure stress, grain-size distribution and proppant density. These properties will be tested in the laboratory in compliance with the International Standard Organization (ISO 13503-2 and ISO 13505-5) for commercial proppant. The results obtained from the analyses will be compared to the existing sand based proppant in the market.