Sand is mined. It is washed. It is dried. Then it gets wet again. Such is the unassuming life cycle of most every grain of sand ever pumped down a horizontal well along with millions of gallons of water and into the freshly opened fractures of a tight-rock formation in the US. But what if the sand never had to be dried? To start with, the unconventional sector could save tens or hundreds of millions of dollars a year, simply by cutting out the capital-intensive drying process.
