The Penn State Research Foundation

Ryan P Koseski

John R Hellmann

Barry E Scheetz

Barry E Sheetz

A process for producing proppants from waste mineralogical material. The process can include providing the waste mineralogical material in a form such as particles, fines, dust, powders, and the like, and forming a plurality of 'green' pellets from the waste mineralogical material. Thereafter, the plurality of green pellets are fed into a provided flame drop tower that has a combustion flame, a hot zone, and a collection basin located downstream from the hot zone. The plurality of green pellets pass through the hot zone, are melted and subsequently solidified in the shape of a sphere downstream from the hot zone to form vitrified glass spheres. In some instances, the vitrified glass spheres are subjected to a devitrification step.

Proppants from mineralogical material

A process for increasing toughness of glass particulates is provided. The process includes providing an aluminosilicate glass particulate, the glass particulate generally having the form of a sphere, and heating the glass particulate to a temperature greater than 600&#xb0; C. for a predetermined time. Thereafter, the glass particulate can be cooled to ambient temperature and the heating step can alter the failure mechanism of the glass particulate from a high energy failure that produces generally fine powder to a lower energy failure that produces generally large fragments. The glass particulate can be an amorphous glass particulate and may or may not have a nominal composition that corresponds to rhyolite, basalt, tholeiite, olivine and/or andesite.

Treatment of melt quenched aluminosilicate glass spheres for application as proppants via devitrification processes

The disclosed invention relates to a process of using molten salt ion exchange to treat particles such as spherically shaped soda-lime-silica glass particles. The treated particles may be used as proppants in hydrofractured oil and natural gas wells.

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State College, PA, United States of America

Ryan P Koseski