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Applied Minerals To Develop Ceramic Proppants

Share Print Bookmark    |    Monday,October 28,2013

Applied Minerals, Inc.  announced that it has entered into a development agreement with OPF Enterprises, LLC (“OPF”), a leading ceramic consulting firm that focuses on ceramic materials and process development, to formulate a range of ceramic-based proppants to market to oil and gas drillers in shale formations in close proximity to the Company’s Utah-based Dragon Mine.

Preliminary development work indicates that the presence of both halloysite and other clay minerals found in areas of the Dragon Mine resource produce ceramic proppants with attractive crush strength, permeability and specific gravity characteristics that meet or exceed certain performance metrics of several competing ceramic-based products.

Formulations will primarily utilize alumina-rich clay found both in the mine’s Western Area resource and five surface piles, which possess chemistries very similar to the ceramic proppants currently on the market. The Company’s higher-grade clay resource, located in the Dragon Pit area of the mine, will continue to be used to develop higher value applications such as polymer composites, flame retardants, environmental remediation, controlled release carriers and catalysts.

Applied Minerals is advantageously positioned to capitalize on the attractive growth prospects of the proppant market due to the proximity of its Dragon Mine to the Bakken Shale, a user of approximately $1.0 billion of ceramic proppants per year, the largest in North America. The Bakken region is served primarily by ceramic producers located in Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia and China, against all of which the Dragon Mine has a meaningful logistical advantage