I just read a bizarre story this morning on a small town in England called Northampton.

There’s this guy that dresses up as a clown, and he resembles one from a spooky Stephen King book/movie called “It.”

Google “It clown” and see what I’m talking about. Scary clown indeed.

Anyway, this guy in England just stands on random corners, holding balloons and staring at passersby.

He doesn’t give the balloons away or anything – just stands there and stares.

Freaky.

He has this Facebook page that you are supposed to “Like” if you see him or like what he’s doing.

As you can imagine, there have been lots of interesting responses to this clown man. Some people think he’s an artist and like his work.

One guy responded that he will get out of his car and fight the clown if he sees it!

Anyway, there are “creepy clowns” in the frac sand testing business, too.

Yes, indeed. They stare at me sometimes when I look through the microscope.

I’m talking about impurities in the sand, like iron oxides, clays, feldspars, and carbonates.

These are particles other than the silica sand grains.

These can be seen under the scope, and they tend to be much darker than the pure silica sand. Some are round, which help the sphericity and roundness test.

Others are nasty jagged creeps.

An additional way to determine how many of these impurities (“creepy clowns”) exist is to perform an acid solubility test.

It’s a very exacting process, using a tight procedure and nasty acid to dissolve the impurities.

So, we are dissolving some of the “creepy clowns” in acid.

It’s kind of satisfying.

As long as the weight dissolved is less than 2% or 3% of the total sample weight (depends on the size of the sand being tested), the sand will meet the American Petroleum Institute standards for frac sand.

More than the recommended percentage of impurities, and the “creepy clowns” in the sand have won.

If you are interested in finding out whether or not you can defeat the “creepy clowns” in your sand and use the sand for hydraulic fracturing, you may be interested in our package deal.

We don’t clown around here in our lab [couldn’t resist – heh].

You can get an API suite of testing for $1,950 complete. This includes sieve analysis, sphericity and roundness, acid solubility testing, turbidity, K-value crush testing, and bulk density.

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