Recently our daughter fractured her arm, right near her elbow. And yes, I am sorry to say I am at fault, because I let our family get a trampoline.
Darn trampolines!
Anyway, when we had her at the emergency room, they put her through a whole battery of testing, including a couple different x-rays, and then a CT scan to check the soft tissue.
My poor girl was in pain as they repositioned her arm and moved her around in order to reduce her exposure to the x-ray and CT scan radiation, and also to make sure that they had the arm in the right position to get a good look at it.
Lots of painful testing, in order to see what they should do next.
Kind of reminds me of how some projects can go in the lab, with sand testing in particular.
First, clients are often interested in whether their sand samples can be used as frac sand, which requires at a minimum:
1) Washing (sometimes attrition scrubbing, too)
2) Drying
3) A full stack sieve analysis, so we can see what frac sand product size fractions your sample might have
4) Sphericity and roundness testing (we also take some microscopic pictures of your sand grains)
5) Bulk density (needed in order to determine the crush test mass)
6) Initial stress crush testing, where we crush at the American Petroleum Institute recommended starting stress and report the results
Then, based on those results, you can do a few things:
1) Decide to continue with frac sand testing, and do the full API frac sand analysis
2) Look at other industries that your sand might make it into
For looking at other industries, I definitely recommend doing silica analysis, which tells you the percentage of silica in your sand. That weighs heavily on what industries your sand might best fit into.
Does it end up being a lot of tests? Yes, sometimes!
But, we make it as pain free as possible for you here at the lab! With our volume discounts and real-time results reporting (for larger projects) we take some of the aches and pains from the testing process.
For sand testing services that aren’t nearly as painful as a fractured arm, go here!
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