Wisconsin Industrial Sand

MEGATEX Screeners Help Meet Productivity, Yield And Environmental Goals

A new approach to high capacity screening has helped Wisconsin Industrial Sand, part of the Fairmount Minerals group, improve productivity, yield and quality while reducing dust in its sand processing operation.

Wisconsin Industrial Sand, located in central Wisconsin, is the only underground industrial sand mining operation in the US.

Fairmount Minerals, headquartered in Chardon, Ohio, is one of the largest producers of industrial sand in the United States. The company operates nine sand mining and/or processing facilities in the United States and Canada and four resin coating facilities in the US.

Wisconsin Industrial Sand, located in central Wisconsin adjacent to the Mississippi River near Maiden Rock, is the only underground industrial sand mining operation in the US. Here, the company mines a high quality coarse industrial sand used in oil and gas drilling industry fracturing and gravel pack applications. The sand is unique to the area. It’s a rounded grain ”Northern White” sand found in the Jordan and St. Peter formations and is prized for its strength and consistency.

At the Maiden Rock mining facility, material is removed by two large front-end loaders to an underground hopper. It is transferred from the hopper via a slurry line to an underground wash plant where clays and fine-grained sand are removed, producing sand that is 75 percent +40 mesh material. After this processing operation, sand is conveyed to an above ground drying and screening facility.

Improving Product Quality and Yield

To help improve productivity and quality, the management of Wisconsin Industrial Sand installed two MEGATEX M3180-2 Screeners developed by ROTEX INC., Cincinnati, Ohio, to replace 50 modified Tyler screen units. The MEGATEX Screeners are a three-screen design, each with a total of 180 square feet of screen surface.

	In an effort to increase productivity, Wisconsin Industrial Sand replaced 50 modified Tyler screen units at the with two very efficient MEGATEX M3180 developed by Rotex, Inc. Using MEGATEX screeners, the yield at Wisconsin Industrial Sand has gone up to 77 percent.

With the older units, the company was operating at approximately 65 tons per hour with a 57 percent saleable product yield, according to Joe Fodo, Fairmount Minerals Vice President of Operations.

“With the two MEGATEX screeners, we are able to feed the system with 100 tons of sand per hour, and our yield has gone up to 77 percent,” he said. “That’s a considerable improvement for us.”

Fodo added that product quality improved as well. “We’re seeing consistently higher CPK values during inspection. That’s important because the oil and gas industry is very demanding when it comes to the grain size of the sand.”

MEGATEX Screeners employ wide screening surfaces that allow a high volume of material to be separated by spreading it over the screen as thinly as possible, cleaning the bulk of it to the required specification. In any screening application, as the volume increases the depth of the material passing over the screen increases. Increased bed depth diminishes the screener's ability to stratify material, which is essential to effective screening. 

MEGATEX Screeners handle increased capacity and maintain screening accuracy by utilizing screen surfaces that are wider rather than longer. This width serves to keep bed depths low so screening accuracy and efficiency are maintained at high capacity.

The MEGATEX suspended cable system enables the free-floating, gyratory screening action while isolating vibration and protecting the surrounding structure and equipment.

MEGATEX Screeners are designed to provide a long stroke, gyratory motion that spreads material evenly across the full width of the distribution panel. This motion results in proportional feeding to each screen level and eliminates the need for multiple process feed points. The long stroke, low frequency motion also produces effective ball mesh cleaning to control blinding for extended uninterrupted operation.

Managing Dust

“A problem that we had with the other screeners was that they were an open deck design and required a number of people to brush them continually to maintain the efficiency we had, as low as it was,” Fodo said. 

Just as important and the productivity and yield improvements was a reduction of environmental concerns. “The original operation as so dusty that we were concerned for the health of the workers,” Fodo said. “With the installation of the MEGATEX Screeners, we reduced dust to less than 1/2 of the permissible exposure level as determined by the Mine Safety and Health Administration.”

MEGATEX Screeners are sealed and require very little negative pressure, less than 1,000 CFM to control dust. 

	Easier screen frame access is now possible using the MEGATEX patented internal Lift-Rail system with non-binding stainless steel cam activation. MEGATEX Screeners allow for better dust control by using a unique sleeveless brush system and discharge vent connection for added control without the use of connecting sleeves.

The MEGATEX Screener design also features quick-change screens. “Changing screens in the old system was very labor intensive,” Fodo said. “When one screen went down, the entire system went down. Now, if a screen fails, we can remove it quickly, repair or replace it, and be back in operation with very little lost time.”

The company was also able to reduce the amount of square footage necessary for the screening operation. The two MEGATEX Screeners require only about 25 to 30 percent of the space required by the former system, recovering a significant amount of plant floor space. The MEGATEX Screeners are suspended using a cable system. This allows the free-floating, gyratory screening action while isolating vibration to protect the surrounding structure and equipment.

Wisconsin Industrial Sand recently purchased an additional ROTEX MEGATEX Screener, an M2120 to add more capacity to the screening operation.

“We’re confident that this approach to screening will help us continue to improve the overall efficiency of our operation and the quality of our product,” Fodo said.