Method of manufacturing and using rod-shaped proppants and anti-flowback additives
AssigneeImerys
InventorsJean Andre Alary, Thomas Parias
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A sintered rod-shaped proppant and anti-flowback agent possesses high strength and high conductivity. The sintered rods comprise between about 0.2% by weight and about 4% by weight aluminum titanate. In some embodiments, the sintered rods are made by mixing bauxitic and non-bauxitic sources of alumina that may also contain several so-called impurities (such as TiO2), extruding the mixture, and sintering it. The starting material may optionally be milled to achieve better compacity and crush resistance in the final sintered rod. A fracturing fluid may comprise the sintered rods alone or in combination with a proppant, preferably a proppant of a different shape.
Claims19
A method for making a proppant or antiflowback additive, the method comprising:
- mixing a ceramic precursor and at least one binding agent to form an extrudable mixture;
- extruding the extrudable mixture to form a plurality of extruded rods;
- reducing the length of the extruded rods by at least partially drying the rods in a manner that results in breakage of the extruded rods to form dried extruded rods of reduced length;
- and
- sintering the dried extruded rods of reduced length to obtain the proppant or antiflowback additive.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.