Ohio Basic Minerals-Not just ordinary sand!

by S. J. Wagner

It behooves anyone in the aggregate industry today to be a visionary, or at least try to be one. It gives the entrepreneur an extra dimension regarding business conditions in the coming years, months or weeks. It allows the visionary to spot figurative fissures and cracks, the industry potholes that perhaps others don’t see. Patrick McDonald, Ohio Basic Mineral’s president, is such a person.

As the plant nears completion, this photo shows the compact design of the OBM processing plant.

A closer look at one of the three Midwestern Industries, MEV35-5 screens.

“We like working in Ohio,” he said, speaking by phone from his corporate offices in Denver, CO. “We have an oil and gas company based in Ashland, KY, just south of Jackson, Ohio, where Ohio Basic Materials (OBM) is located. Garrett Clemons is vice president of this company. We’re concentrated right there in Jackson, Ohio, but our sales capability extends throughout the midwest. By virtue of our rail connection, CSX and Norfolk Southern, we have a virtual North American market. We recently sold some materials to a customer in Canada,” he notes.

The Ohio Basic Minerals LLC Jackson, Ohio plant utilizes a Starkaire fluid bed dryer. Once the silica sand is dried, it is conveyed to a Midwestern Industries MEV35-3 primary screen. At that point, the primary screen makes a separation of 6/10 and 10/20 mesh silica sand. Once separated, the fines are then conveyed to three MEV35-5 finishing screens, which produce Ohio Basic’s finished products.

From there, the silica sand is conveyed to storage silos where it is stored until the material is ready for shipping, at which time, it is conveyed to Ohio Basic’s loading facility. There it can be packaged as either a bulk or bagged material and then loaded out via truck or rail.

McDonald feels, however, that silica sand applications are an under appreciated sector of the economy. “When you start to look at the way that industrial silica sand is used, and the number of products in which it is used, it’s astounding.”

This photo taken during plant construction, shows three Midwestern Industries, MEV35-5 finishing screens set into place.

OBM's finished plant has a clean, environmentally friendly look.

But how does silica sand fit into the overall aggregate quarrying picture? “My experience,” says McDonald, “is that when people talk about sand, the common understanding of what that means is road surfacing and building materials. They are generally categorized as aggregates, which is a big business, a very important business. Industrial silica sand is a little bit different. It is a more specialized product, one that is more highly processed. On the other hand, aggregate sand is more of a bulk materials type of product, whereas industrialized silica sand is much more specialized with higher end applications.

“Our primary interest is in water filtration,” he explains. “We think water is a very important, growing, worldwide sector of the economy. That sounds like an obvious and generalized statement, but when we look at what’s happening within the infrastructure around the world, but specifically the U.S., we think there’s going to be an increasing emphasis placed on water handling, water treatment and related water businesses.”

“The other market that we’re focused on, and one we feel has a great potential, are oil and gas fracturing applications,” he said. “We have been oil and gas investors over a long period of time, and we’re seeing an increasing use of fracturing technology to enhance the recoverability from oil and gas reservoirs, particularly in Appalachia.” (Hydraulic fracturing is a technique used to stimulate the production of oil and natural gas whereby fluids and proppant are injected underground at high pressures. The formations fracture, and oil or gas flows more freely out of the formation.)

“One of the hot plays right now is the Marcellus Shale, which is in Pennsylvania, New York and West Virginia,” said McDonald. “We think we have a geographical advantage because of our close proximity to those markets. We see that also as a growth area. Boiling it down to our two important markets, silica sand and gravel, is for the water filtration and the oil and gas applications.”

OBM is also mining, or quarrying, a specific rock formation called the Sharon Conglomerate, which is pervasive throughout Ohio and the midwest. “It’s a Pennsylvania sand that is well known and ubiquitous throughout the region,” notes McDonald. “The production process involves screening, washing, cleaning and drying of the sand. We have the ability to package our product in bulk transport, bulk bags or 50 to 100-pound bags depending on the customer and application.”

Is what he’s talking about like beach sand, granular? Or more like kitty litter, almost powdery? “It depends on what market you’re selling to,” he said. “We have the ability to
screen different sands.”

From this angle, the Starkaire fluid bed dryer stands neatly beside the enclosed screen tower.

With the plant in operation, the OBM's Jackson, Ohio plant supplies high quality sand and aggregate for the water treatment industry.

In one of its bulletins, the GSA (Geologic Society of America) states: “In older literature the pebbles of the Sharon are described as ‘vein quartz’ suggesting an igneous rock source. Fossils as pebbles, and pebbles of sandstone and conglomerate indicate rocks that were in part sedimentary. Almost no minerals are present except quartz and most of the quartz grains show secondary growth, indicating that the individual grains have been through more than one cycle of sedimentation. Although igneous rocks were doubtlessly the original source of many of the multicycle particles, the lack of pebbles of igneous rock and grains of igneous rock accessory minerals strongly suggests that the sediments of the Sharon are several cycles removed from the original source rocks. This concept is confirmed by examination of thin sections. Most pebbles show ghost granular structure and the inclusions in both pebbles and sand grains are characteristic of quartz derived from a metamorphic source.”

The state of Ohio has authorized millions of dollars in disbursements for fiscal 2010 for water treatment projects, according to McDonald. Most water treatment projects use sand and gravel for filtration media. Not all of these projects are necessarily involving rehabilitation of the actual filtration. It is an indication of the staggering potential in the water handling/water treatment business. People are expanding their facilities and rehabilitating older facilities; water pipes that are 100 years old. Every now and then, there is a spectacular water main break in some of these older eastern cities. They are all going to be replaced, maybe not tomorrow, but over the next 20 years. I see that as a huge growth area. There aren’t as many public companies in this realm, so it will be an area where a lot of money will be chasing it, but not a lot of places to invest the money.”

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