North Dakota Loess As A Potential Microproppant -- January 12, 2019

This link will probably load as a pdf on your desktop.

Loess: rhymes with "bus."

Where "small sand" might be too big for use as a proppant in some areas of the Bakken, perhaps a microproppant like loess might work.

From the linked article:

Some proppant manufacturers have introduced new microproppants with grain sizes equivalent to that of a human hair and with the consistency of rock flour.

Sediment particle sizes in this range fall into the silt size category, which is generally defined as sedimentary particles sized between 0.0625 to 0.0039 millimeters.

Silt is very common throughout the sedimentary surface geology of North Dakota and may be found as a component of all of the surficially exposed materials across the state including the glacial sediments found across most of North Dakota, within the individual sedimentary siltstone bedrock layers in southwestern North Dakota, or when transported and deposited by the wind as loess deposits, which can be found in varying thickness across the entire state.

Wow, think about that. 0.0039 mm. Take out a standard ruler and note how "thick" one millimeter is. Not divide that into "10-thousandths." That's incredibly fine sand. 

Right now, the natural sand being used is:

• 100-mesh
• small
• medium
• large 

From this site:

This may load as a pdf on your desktop, 100 mesh.

Mesh size at this link: