The Penn State researchers have developed a synthetic proppant they call PennProp that they say will work better than sand. The ceramic proppant looks like poppy seeds.
PennProp is made in Pennsylvania from mine waste, so Hellmann says it would recycle rock cuttings that now go to landfills. "The environmental advantages are pretty high on our list," he said. "We like that whole idea."
Such is the nationwide frenzy to drill for oil and natural gas in unconventional rock formations like shale that demand for proppant has gone bonkers. A typical Marcellus well now consumes 5 million pounds of sand, enough to fill 25 railcars. It all comes from Midwestern sand mines.
Marcellus drilling accounts for about 14 percent of the nation's 79 billion-pound proppant market this year, according to the investment bank Global Hunter Securities L.L.C. That would fill a train stretching from Maine to California.
"The market for this stuff is enormous," Hellmann said. The Freedonia Group Inc., a research firm, estimates the proppant demand is increasing 15 percent a year, and will reach $3.2 billion in 2014.
Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Central and Northern Pennsylvania, a state-funded agency that assists start-ups, saw promise in PennProp, invested $167,000 this year, and helped the researchers form a company, Nittany Extraction Technlogies L.L.C.
Ben Franklin also recruited an entrepreneur, Marty Bradley, to run the company. Bradley said his goal was to attract about $15 million in private capital to produce hundreds of tons of proppant to test in an actual well. He started out by matching Ben Franklin's investment.
"I've been investing in Penn State start-ups since 1994," said Bradley, "and I'm happily putting my own money into this effort - the risk-reward is there."
