Sandstorm

Oil & Gas

The Challenge

The Oil & Gas industry faced many challenges with the transloading of sand from trailers to the material blender. Existing pneumatic solutions were slow to operate, cumbersome to set up, noisy, required more space, and produced significant dust resulting in increased exposure risks to silica-based sand. Propell saw this as a great opportunity and approached TYCROP to design a better solution.

GOALS

Decrease equipment footprint

Minimize exposure to silica dust

Improve last-mile traffic and congestion

Automated & remote control operations from a safe location

The Solution

In 2011, the design team at TYCROP set out to design a safer solution from scratch. Knowing pneumatics only heightened dust-exposure problems, the team innovated a solution centered around conveying sand – while keeping it entirely enclosed. The resulting design utilized a transloader (ViperBelt), sand storage boxes (Gravitybox), a conveyor system (VectorBelts) and a remote power pack (HydraBear) to power up the system.

With completely enclosed conveyors, an automated control system, and the fastest setup time in industry, Sandstorm became an instant success.

Today, TYCROP has set out to electrify the Sandstorm system for Propell’s customers to realize more efficiency gains and strive towards more sustainable operations.

Technical Specs

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Remote control operation

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Intuitive automated sand conveying and measuring

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Gravity-fed storage bin solution

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Recorded silica at 0.014mg/m3, well below North American limit of 0.025mg/m3

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3 hour setup time (opposed to competition’s 48 hour)