There was a recent series on the History Channel that absolutely kicked gluteus maximus.
It was called “The Men Who Built America,” and it told the fascinating stories of Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, Thomas Edison, John Rockefeller, and other titans of the industrial revolution.
As luck would have it, I recently met with the actor that played Thomas Edison on that series.
He is the son of a friend of mine.
Anyway, the actor and I were talking about how his character ended up being portrayed in the series.
He said that he grew up with this idea of Edison being the gentleman’s inventor.
So did I.
But in the series, they portrayed lots of character issues with Edison, including the fact that he totally underestimated one of his junior engineers, Nikolai Tesla.
Tesla really wanted to push the use of alternating current (AC) for electrical transmission and distribution.
Edison was utterly opposed to AC, and wanted his direct current (DC) used everywhere.
Tesla ended up leaving Edison’s lab and going with Mr. Westinghouse to install AC generators at Niagara Falls.
Now, Tesla’s ideas about AC were spot on – the electrical grid grew to use AC as its main mode for transmission and distribution of electricity.
Edison’s goals for DC to be the “cat’s meow” for electrical power didn’t happen, but Edison is still widely known as the electrical genius, and Edison is much more popular than Tesla.
Edison did create a light bulb that was commercially marketable. I believe that gave him a bit of a bull head when it came to evenly evaluating Tesla’s ideas for AC.
Anyway, I’ve ran across something similar in the frac sand industry.
As you may know, the American Petroleum Institute recommends that both sphericity and roundness have ratings of 0.6 or higher each when the test is performed.
Many of my clients have sand where the sphericity rating is high enough, but the roundness test is less than 0.6 because many grains of sand have sharp angular corners.
I just got off the phone with an interesting cat.
He is developing a piece of processing machinery that just might be able to “round” those sharp corners.
If that is the case, some sand that might not have become frac sand before might be marketable after processing.
Time will tell, but I’m excited about this possibility.
I’m getting a before and after sample soon from my colleague at the processing equipment manufacturer.
If that equipment can really improve the quality of mediocre sand to make it frac sand quality, it could totally change the industry!
Imagine a market where suppliers everywhere (like you?) can get their sand to market once it’s processed with this equipment.
Now they might be able to compete against the “big boys” of frac sand, because of a technological edge.
A bit like the old Edison and Tesla competition. Sweet.
More to come on that equipment.
Time for today’s pitch.
Our lab still has the best deal on frac sand testing, in my humble but accurate opinion.
Full suite of API testing, with really fast turnaround time, for $1,950. This is for a whole mess o’ tests, neatly packaged up with pretty paper on the outside.
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