Pit & Quarry, February 2014

FRAC SAND mix of sand into a JCI 6 x 20 wet screen which sends selected material along to a McLanahan separator Separated out material then enters a McLanahan flat bottom classifier which channels the slurry into a VD18 dewatering screen The screen produces a stackable frac sand of 20 to 50 mesh size The entire process takes five minutes Finer material that was de selected is captured in a separate ultra fine recovery process This second filtering greatly reduces the volume of material that otherwise would end up in a slurry pond thus enhancing the ponds utility Four people run the entire operation and a fifth is tasked with quality control R B Scott Co of Eau Claire supplied the equipment To process the sand Barton executives settled on 20 acres located 25 miles south of Grantsburg in North Branch Minn at the southern terminus of the St Croix Valley Railroad The proximity to the railroad was a key consideration The shortline railroad operates on track formerly owned by Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway and connects with BNSF main lines This means Bartons processed sand can be loaded at the plant for direct shipping south east and west to Americas oil and gas fracking hot spots State of the art Barton began to turn the nearly empty site into a state of the art sand processing plant The engineering firm M A Bielski Associates Chanhassen Minn designed a 90 ft high screening building positioned the plants waste and storage silos and sited three railroad track spurs for railcars The rest of the engineering and all of the electrical wiring was completed in house Tiller employees were pulled as needed from its other divisions including Todd Laubis vice president of Tillers asphalt operations who was instrumental in development of the industrial sand plant The thinking behind Bartons approach to constructing a plant was that An aerial view of Barton Industrial Sands processing area in North Branch Minn it had to be instantly recognized as a premier facility We were not going to be the first one in the business Olson says so we wanted to make sure we produced a very high quality product in a very efficient operation No one would argue with the plants efficiency beginning with its receiving system To truck the wet in process sand from Grantsburg the company uses 25 ton grain haulers that were modified to handle the material The trucks enter the plant grounds and roll onto a Masaba unloading hopper that can accommodate an entire truckload According to Laubis a trucks approach triggers the equipment so that the sand is dumped into machinery prepared to receive it A Superior TeleStacker conveyor funnels the sand to a 100 x 100 ft walled tent that can shelter 6000 tons of the quartz material A hopper in the floor of the tented area eventually feeds another TeleStacker carrying the material to a 50 ft long 9 ft high Custom Welding Metal Fabricating Co dryer attached to a Gencor burner Temperatures reaching 220 degrees strip away any residual moisture still clinging to the sand from its washing at the mine From there the sand is bucketed to the upper reaches of a 90 ft high steelframed structure where the material is dropped through a series of Sweco screens to separate proppant sand from other products Each finished and waste product is channeled into a separate Belgrade storage silo Waste products are accumulated in 220 ton silos and eventually trucked from the site The finished product flows into 270 ton capacity silos from which it is conveyed on demand to a 100 ton trackside loading unit From there the sand is loaded into railcars in measurable dumps with a scanner recording data on each car as it rolls up to be loaded 24 hour turnaround A remote controlled Trackmobile moves the 110 ton railcars as needed which is often The sand doesnt linger in North Branch Laubis says that just The processing facility incorporates seven baghouses or emissions control devices a reflection of public sensitivity about air quality 18 PIT QUARRY February 2014 www pitandquarry com