SCP Solution – Frac Sand Slide Gate

Customer:

Klun Solutions

Application:

Slide Gate for Frac Sand Silo

Product Being Fed:

Frac Sand

Equipment:

14” Squire Electric Slide Gate

Customer Challenge:

Klun Solutions of Vernal, UT, a leading solutions provider to the oil and gas services industry, is developing a ground breaking frac sand delivery system with an emphasis on efficiency and effectiveness. This frac sand storage system’s main advantage is it can gravity feed directly into the blender hopper, eliminating the moving parts that are always prone to malfunction. This system utilizes a series of electric slide gates to control the flow of the frac sand to the blender while maintaining near perfect storage efficiency. Klun Solutions reached out to SCP, after an extensive internet search, about this unique slide gate application.

SCP Solution:

SCP engineers reviewed Klun Solution’s requirements in detail and developed a preliminary design to start the collaborative process of delivering these electric slide gates.

The first requirement was the slide gates needed to be able to reliably open and close, even under the headload of a completely full bin. SCP used a proprietary slide gate calculation set to determine the pressure acting on the slide plate and the subsequent force required to overcome the resistive frictional force. A Duff-Norton linear actuator with 1,000 pounds of force was chosen. Another challenge for a slide gate in this application is the abrasiveness of the sand passing through it. The standard UHMW plate wipers were abandoned in favor of heavy-duty steel plate wipers. The slide gate was also fully enclosed with top and bottom covers to reduce dusting during operation. With the storage system’s completion date getting closer, timeliness and cost were major considerations. The custom slide gate was designed, built and delivered in only a few weeks, keeping the project on time and under budget.