This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will develop a novel and sustainable process to utilize industrial waste materials and energy to prepare high value commercial structural materials. Fly ash from coal power plants will be formulated and reacted with flue gas to develop proppant materials for hydraulic fracturing in oil and gas exploration. The use of fly ash will not only reduce the environmental impact of fly ash disposal but also eliminate the need to mine and transport a large quantity of ceramic raw materials to proppant production plants. Utilization of waste energy from flue gas will also enable a sustainable process to produce proppants without the need of high temperature ceramic processing. Therefore, the combined use of fly ash and flue gas will enable the production of low-cost and high-strength proppants for oil and gas exploration.
The broader impacts/commercial potential will be the potential to provide a sustainable and low-cost process to utilize coal power plant wastes to produce high strength structural materials. These high strength materials can be used as proppants for hydraulic fracturing in oil and gas exploration. The global proppant market for oil and gas exploration is expected to reach $7 billion by 2017 with a 10.75% compound annual growth rate. The success of the proposed work could significantly reduce the landfill requirements for disposal of fly ash, and the resulting impact on the environment. Finally, the utilization of flue gas treatment to replace traditional high-temperature ceramic material processing will reduce the level of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Last Modified: 08/03/2014 Submitted by: Jia Liu This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project developed an innovative and sustainable process to utilize coal combustion fly ash waste material and flue gas exhaust to produce high strength proppant materials for hydraulic fracturing application in oil and gas exploration. Fly ash from coal power plants was formulated with a unique material composition to allow easily controllable shaping of proppant granules and rapid material strength development after granulation. A novel low temperature material strength development process was successfully developed based on the material composition, enabling the utilization of waste energy from flue gas to produce high strength proppants. The fly ash proppants developed in the Phase I project were low cost and high strength proppants suitable for hydraulic fracturing operations. Of the 60 million tons of fly ash produced by coal power plants, over 35 million tons of fly ash needs to be disposed in landfills because of the lack of advanced fly ash utilization technology and suitable applications with large quantity needs. The innovative fly ash utilization technology developed in Phase I can significantly reduce the need for landfills to dispose fly ash and its impact on the environment. The technology will also provide an environmentally friendly production alternative to energy intensive ceramic proppant production process currently used in the industry, reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Additionally as the fly ash proppants developed in Phase I require a minimal amount of water to produce, water usage can be greatly reduced as well. Therefore, the fly ash geopolymer proppant technology is an environmentally friendly, energy-efficient, and water-efficient proppant technology that will significantly reduce fly ash waste disposal needs, carbon dioxide emission, and water consumption, making positive impacts on the society and environment.
