Anyone have any experience making oil sand with motor grader? I've got a dug out select fill pit, with cushion sand left on bottom. I've had some customers hit me up about making oil sand. I was told to make windrows the length of pit. Then oil truck would dump oil between windrows, and then use blade to mix it up. Or use a soil stabilizer mixer. Anyone know the cost of what kind of oil? And what kind of production could one expect in a day? Also been told pugmill is the way more efficient. Wondering if this could make some money ? Or be cheaper to buy oil sand from asphalt company. Any advice will be appreciated
I used to run a asphalt plant a few years back and we did make oil sand for tank farm beds. It seems to me we used a blend of PG-64-22 and Diesel fuel to make a thin MC consistency liquid. I have seen a guy making a oily product with an old TET front mixer truck, this could be the cheapest and easiest way to do it. $10,000 for a beater you can drive to the job and then place the fill where you want it. Just a thought.
Here's a silly question. What's oil sand and what's it for?
The naturally occurring oil sand is called Bitumen, and is used in the manufacture of asphalt...
I am familiar with the oil sands, but I took from the above posts that the were blending refined oil with sand for some purpose.
many years ago the gypsies would come to town and do blacktop sealing, they would hit everyone up and do the jobs in a few days and then leave town, it looked great till it never dried, they just used old motor oil and rollers..lol...this sounds like a poor mans way to may blacktop for paving...
I didn’t know that anyone still used oil sand, but it was used to bed steel tanks on the ground and to provide a measure of rust prevention. The theory is similar to hot mix asphalt, it will be a flexible mat that will be waterproof. The oil sand we made was with a MC grade AC(medium cure asphalt cement). Later on as MC was hard to source, we “blended” our own using diesel fuel as a viscosity reducing agent. We would make it up in a distributor truck and connect it to the plant AC line and then make the oil sand like we would HMA. I’m not sure what the AC % was, I think it was 5% and the sand was 250F or so. The sand won’t bond with the oil if it isn’t dry and that’s why asphalt plants are the ones who generally make it. With that said, there is a company in Cleveland that makes a cold mix asphalt liquid that will bond to ambient temperature material. They’re a small enough outfit to make a product to make oil sand using ambient temperature sand using a portable pug mill or whatever other means you have. Now you did it! You got me started on asphalt and running a plant!
a question as I dont know, does the oil sand harden up so the oil doesnt seep down into the ground? and contaminate virgin ground?
The AC won’t strip from the aggregate if it properly bonds, as in the aggregate is hot and dry when mixed together. It is no different than when you pave a road, sub base contamination is a non issue. I had some greenie types that thought if you spill some AC on the ground it should be considered hazardous waste, my response was then our nations highways are a wasteland. How does it become ok if I mix it with aggregate and put it down with a paver?
ok , gotcha, so oil sand in layman terms, basically like asphalt ..
Geez, I loaded out about 50,000 tons of oil sand last night, but I don’t think it’s quite the same.....lol.
then what exactly is oil sand made of and what consistency is it? or is it as simple as oil mixed with sand...lol
Many years ago we would use MC3 grade oil. Lay out the gravel with a blade. Spray on the hot oil with a distributor truck and then mix it all together with the grader. After it was thoroughly mixed, we either loaded it into trucks to be hauled to the jobsite, or put it into a pile with a loader to be used later. Does anybody know if this method is still used?
Two of our neighboring counties still do blade mix, usually where they have a length of bypassed asphalt roadway, That makes it easier to keep it clean when they mix. I have no idea which oil mix they use, but they can stockpile the stuff for pothole patches, etc.
I wouldn't mind learning what type of oil they use these days for that.
Ours in naturally occurring. It's a mixture of Bitumen, with sand, silt and clay. We mine it to extract the bitumen and upgrade it into synthetic crude oil.
Sorry fellows didn't get any emails notifying me of the responses. I got a little info from the county barn here at home. Basically blade dry sand with low grade crude oil, or mixing it with pug mill. Without asphalt plant this can only be done in summer time. For me I don't think it will be feasible. The county puts one man on blade for 8 hours a day and gets about 50 yards of oil sand. Many thanks