Today in Sand: Valuing One Of The Planet's Most Important Resources

Some fond memories when thinking silica.

From the American Geophysical Union's EOS, July 8:

To Protect the World’s Sand, We Need to Know How to Measure It 
New research provides a more accurate model that coastal managers and engineers can use to account for sand transport over time.

Sand is one of the most valuable natural resources in the world, with up to 50 billion metric tons mined each year. 

Credit: rusm/E+/Getty Images

Sand is such a sought-after resource that by volume, the amount we use is second only to water. Sand is crucial for manufacturing cement, glass, and asphalt and even everyday items like paper and toothpaste. And an increasing portion of the 40–50 billion metric tons of sand mined each year comes from the world’s beaches, which are in turn threatened by rising sea levels due to climate change.

The smooth, round grains of quartz in desert sand are useless for many of our sand needs—we require rougher stuff, like the crushed corals and shells that make up the carbonate sands of tropical beaches. That means managing and accounting for this valuable sand will become more critical in the coming years, but according to a recent study published in Scientific Reports, we have been measuring carbonate sand all wrong. The study proposes a new, updated method that takes carbonate sand’s sought-after variety in shape and size into account.

“Our new method will help to estimate more accurately the sediment transport of carbonate sands in tropical environments,” said Ana Vila-Concejo, an associate professor at the University of Sydney School of Geosciences and coauthor of the paper. “This can directly translate into more accurate coastal management of eroding sandy coasts.”

A Fortuitous Collaboration
From her research on sand hydrodynamics, Vila-Concejo long suspected that carbonate sand transport models were inaccurate, but she could never convince her students to tackle the problem of making better-suited models. Then, Amin Riazi, at the time an early-career research assistant with Eastern Mediterranean University, sent her an email out of the blue. “He had exactly the right skills and was interested in pursuing this research,” Vila-Concejo said.

“As I was discussing the topic with Prof. Vila-Concejo, I realized that surprisingly, and contrary to plenty of studies on other sand types, there is a lack of research related to the settling velocity and the drag coefficient of carbonate sands,” said Riazi, now an assistant professor at the University of Cyprus. He traveled to the University of Sydney for a short research stay, and the two got to work on the carbonate sand problem.

Carbonate Sand Is a Drag

Most equations for sediment transport are based on experimental results from smooth silicate sands, making them a poor fit for beaches, where most of the sand is made up of small bits of shell and coral.

Most equations for sediment transport are based on experimental results from smooth silicate sands, making them a poor fit for beaches, where most of the sand is made up of small bits of shell and coral. Because carbonate sands have more irregular shapes, they have larger drag coefficients than desert sand and move more erratically through the water. This drag, in turn, makes individual grains’ settling velocity much more variable, effectively spreading out the sand grains over a wider distance when they are suspended in water....

....MUCH MORE

Previously in sand:
Trouble in Frac Land (SLCA) 
This follows on the news that Carbo Ceramics Inc., with a large exposure to Chesapeake, issued its own going concern warning on November 11.
There was a time when sand was the new new thing. From 2012 into 2014 silica replaced silcon on the lips of the au courant crowd:

 

Finviz 

But, as recounted elsewhere (September 22, 2015, immediately before the resurgence):

Signposts: The Bull Market In Sand Is Over   
Ineffable, inconsolable sadness.
...We were on the story from the publicly traded get-go (almost), going back to April 2012's "What the Frack? U.S. Silica Up 24% since Feb. 1 IPO (SLCA)". Followed by "Commodities: "Midwest Sees a Sand Rush"". In 2013 growth was so good that a little Ouroboros turnabout was fair play, "More Natural Gas Needed For Frack Sand Suppliers"

By 2014 they were fine, strapping businesses:
"Sand: The Hot New Investment Opportunity" (SLCA)
State of Sand, 2014
What the Frac: "The Past Year’s Hottest IPO Is… " (EMES; SLCA)

From MoneyBeat:

The hottest initial public offering from 2013 isn’t a cloud technology stock, or a biotech company with a promising cancer drug.

The company behind the top-performing IPO in the past 18 months digs sand.

Through Friday, sand-mining company Emerge Energy Services LP has rallied 462% since its debut on May 8, 2013, for the biggest share-price gain since its IPO among companies that went public last year, according to Dealogic....

Having concluded that oil and gas were just a passing fad, this is what we were posting the month Emerge came public:

The Internet of Things: Huggies App Sends You a Tweet Whenever Your Kid Pees...
The Ethics of Torturing Robots
British Psychologists Bashing British Psychiatrists

Shaman               Witch Doctor

Psychologist            Psychiatrist

I so wish I were kidding.

By January of this year we knew it was ending:

What the Frack: "Good Times Run Out for Sand Producers"

with, maybe a bit of forced jollity in March:

Basic Materials: What's New In the Sand Business? (SLCA; EMES)

But there was nothing new, it's sand.
Great timing eh, posting stupid pictures of shamans and witch doctors when the hottest IPO of the year came out and then later calling the bottom, at...the...bottom, and just a few months before the group started a run to a triple,

Fortunately the stock we've been pitching, NVIDIA also a bit better than tripled but still, doing this stuff out in public can be a little embarrassing.

See also: Equities: "Being fluent at swearing is a sign of healthy verbal ability"--UPDATED" from the same British Psychological Society that supplied the Shaman/Witch Doctor pics.

Or maybe "Feeling Like You're an Expert Can Make You Closed-minded" also from the BPS and which we linked to a month after the Death of Equities Sand post.

May 17, 2019
Sand from Greenland’s Melting Ice Sheet Could Bring in Business
August 10, 2019
What's New In Sand: Breakthrough!!

"A World Built on Sand and Oil"
We too have experienced the allure of sand.
Usually at the beach but on the blog as well.... 
"Inside the deadly world of India’s sand mining mafia"
Sand, more interesting than one might suspect....
The World Is Running Out of Sand (Elon Musk to the rescue!)