Winners announced for the Sand Challenge
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The evaluation of the proposals to the Alternatives to Sand in Shale Development Challenge has now been completed, and five winners were announced. We would like to thank everyone who visited Statoil Innovate and showed interest in the challenge.
The goal of the Sand Challenge was to reduce truck trips by addressing the use and composition of proppants in shale production. A proppant is a solid material, typically sand or man-made ceramic materials designed to keep an induced hydraulic fracture open, during or following a fracturing treatment.
We were seeking both a lighter or more compact replacement for currently used proppants and/or new types of fluid or fluid additives that better suspend the proppant and are more efficient. Our ultimate objective is to develop a diverse portfolio of technologies that help reduce the environmental footprint, while enhancing operational efficiencies.
By focusing on sand, the crowdsourcing challenge looked for solutions that had the potential to reduce the environmental impacts on local communities, lessen emissions and make energy production more efficient.
We evaluated more than 100 submissions from over 30 countries, and in July 2015 we announced the winners.
Congratulations to the five winners who are:
Bioastra Technologies, Montréal, Quebec
Solution: Lightweight, Expandable Polymer Proppant. Composite particles that swell up to ten times their initial size in liquid. They are also pliable and able to conform to small cracks in the formation. Similar to material used for artificial cartilage and occlusion agents for surgery.
Biopolynet, Fredericton, New Brunswick
Solution: Coiled Biopolymer Fluid Additive. Makes fluid more viscous, better suspending proppants and enables proppants to adhere to the surface of fissures in the formation.
Hoowaki, Pendleton, South Carolina
Solution: Alumina Ceramic Proppant in the Shape of an “X”. Developed with Shell, the unique X shape creates a drag, reducing settling by up to 50 percent and wedges itself into fractures helping them stay open and prevent the proppant from flowing back.
Semplastics, Oviedo, Florida
Solution: Lightweight Polymer Proppant. Polymer-Derived Ceramic-based proppant is half the density of sand, resilient to corrosion, as well as extreme heat and crush resistant.
University of North Dakota Energy & Environmental Research Center, Grand Forks, North Dakota
Solution: Lightweight, Locally Sourced Ceramic Proppant. Made from local widely available non-premium ore is approximately 40 percent less dense than current ceramic proppants.
The winners were each awarded an initial cash prize of $25,000 USD, and will be eligible to receive additional funding from an available discretionary prize pool of $375,000 USD for potential development or commercialization upon meeting certain additional conditions.