Frac Sand Crush Test Part 2 - Loading the Cylinder
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What you’re looking at now is a bowl of the sand sample that you watched me split. I also weighed out the amount of that sand.
The equipment here is used in crushing frac sand. Starting at the bottom, here is the crush cylinder. This is a heavy gauge steel where we do the crushing in. Attached to that is the pluviator. Pluviator literally means “to rain down.” It is a device that has screens in it that splits the sand as it is coming down. It also creates an even surface in the very bottom of the crush cylinder for you to have a very even surface when you are crushing the sand. This is what the pluviator is doing. There is a lot of complexity just to develop a levels playing field down in the crush cylinder.
We put the sand in the top. I raise the top piece which lets the sand down in between the bars and it drops all the way down to the pluviator.
Now, I am going to step up on a step ladder just to pour our sand from the bowl into the top of the pluviator very carefully. Once done, I’m going to raise that to portion of the pluviator up, to let the sand rain down into the crush cylinder.
Now that I’m on the step ladder, I get the bowl of sand and pour it in the pluviator using a brush. I’m brushing it very carefully because I don’t want to lose any single grain of sand. I’m carefully brushing the sand from the bowl into the top of the pluviator. I’m keeping very good care not to lose any grain of sand since we’re dealing with such small masses of sand. Remember that every grain is important. Scrape the bowl to get every grain of sand and place it on top of the pluviator.
Once done, I’m going to raise the top of the pluviator. I don’t know if you can hear tht, but that sound is the sound of sand going down the steel. Suppose we can go slowly here so we can get a level sand surface in a cylinder. If it is too fast, the surface will be uneven.
The sand is falling down on two different mesh screens. I’m going to take the brush again and brush every single particle of sand down. Make sure that we get everything, down at the very bottom.
After all the brushing, I’m disassembling the pluviator as I work down. I’m brushing the first screen, then put that part off. Brush another screen, then taking that section off.
Here is what the eight screen mesh looks like. This is where the sand is raining down to.
One more piece here. Again, I’m just brushing the sand particles down, making sure that we get every single one. Then, take off the last piece. We’ve got the pluviator disassembled.
Here is what the sand surface looks like. You can see the sand inside the crush cylinder. You can see that nice, level plain fill we’ve built if you will a little sand cylinder inside the crush cylinder that we’re going to crush. That is very level.
Now when I place the piece in, make sure the bottom is clean. Just place it in the crush cylinder and let it drop down carefully. I also rotate this 180 degrees to make sure that surface is level even more. Now, we place it in the carbon hydraulic press.
