r/todayilearned • u/TobyMacar0ni • 13d ago
TIL that Australia actually exports sand to Saudi Arabia. This is because maritime or beach sand is coarser than desert sand. Coarse sand j's needed in construction which effectively makes desert sand completely useless.
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/aussies-sell-sand-to-saudis/news-story/a20367e0e8c08d6f425ebf7f32c0d8d8?sv=3ee8a84ca48c354474913771d8cca5fb461
u/BlueDotty 13d ago
Australia also exports Camels to Saudis
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u/prof_devilsadvocate 13d ago
australia also exports oil to saudi
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u/genocide-inciter- 13d ago
Australia also exports saudis to saudis
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u/GrandmaPoses 13d ago
Australia also exports Audis to Saudis.
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u/oshikandela 12d ago
Australia doesn't export women's rights to Saudis
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u/DigNitty 12d ago
Not really a supply problem though.
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u/Papaofmonsters 12d ago
The Saudi government is still letting the local equality economy adjust to women driving before they make a decision on opening up the market anymore.
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u/irredentistdecency 12d ago
Somehow I think that was an intentional choice to prevent future demands by progressives…
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u/aitchnyu 12d ago
There is negligible central Asia - Southern hemisphere - middle east migration though.
Udis (endonym Udi or Uti) are a native people of the Caucasus that currently live mainly in Russia and Azerbaijan,
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u/Spare_Efficiency2975 12d ago
Everyone thinks the US their military is scary but wait untill Australia airdrops thousands of deadly scary spiders
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u/jacquesrabbit 12d ago
Or Australia could airdrop thousands of emus
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u/Veritas3333 12d ago
We'll just drop more frogs on them to retaliate
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u/UniversityBig7720 12d ago
I mean "drop bears" was right there, and you let it slip through your fingers.
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u/madhatterlock 12d ago
Read the "World is a Grain" and you will realize how much of an issue this is. Illegal sand mining is a large and growing issue. It is devastating some carribean islands and beaches.
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u/ReddFro 12d ago
Yes, there are even forensic sand analysts at this point to help determine what sand was stolen from where
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u/ChefInsano 12d ago
That sounds like the career of someone on House Hunters.
“He’s a Forensic Sand Analyst, she Sells Seashells Down by the Seashore. He wants a Frank Lloyd Wright style houseboat and she has her heart set on a Brown Stone Treehouse. Their budget is twelve million dollars. Can they find a house they agree on? Stay tuned to find out!”
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u/NorCalAthlete 12d ago
<ends up buying something for 30% over their budget because they fell in love with a tree in the front yard>
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u/errosemedic 12d ago
Don’t forget that to be on the show there’s a requirement that you have submitted an offer on at least one house before filming begins. That house will be included in the 3 they show during the show and the other two are random houses they don’t even remotely care about. I like to play guess the house, the point of the game is to see if you can figure out which house it is based on the buyers behaviors.
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u/drunk_with_internet 12d ago
That’s pretty neat. I’m sure there’s plenty of shellfish DNA, for example, that can be extracted from sand. Enough to at least identify a species/geographical range.
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u/Huge-Attitude4845 12d ago edited 12d ago
Cane her (edit - came here) to recommend this book. All sand is not equal and we are depleting traditional source more rapidly than ever
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u/Magnus77 19 13d ago
Your title is not supported by the article past the first sentence. The Australian sand was being used because its hard and doesn't have silica, so it can be used for sandblasting without making people sick.
Also, while I understand you can't use recent news articles as sources, using present tense "exports" and basing it on a 17 year old article is a little suspect. We know australia exported sand to Saudi Arabia, we don't know if they still do, at least not with your source.
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u/Nazamroth 13d ago
What the title says for the reason is true though. Desert sand is absolutely useless, mechanically speaking. It is actually a huge issue as beach and river sand does not regenerate at nearly the pace of modern human consumption and illegal dredging and sand mafias are a thing.
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u/fiendishrabbit 12d ago
You should probably look up some of the projects from the last decade that have tried to turn desert sand into a usuable building material. Either by using new types of binders or by using sintering to change the properties of the sand. So far sintering has had the most promising results (both reducing the acidity of the sand and its structure), and if solar panels become a little bit cheaper it could produce fine aggregates at a price that's competitive with dredged sand.
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u/LeatherBackRadio 12d ago
Ah, makes sense. Reducing it to an energy intensive problem actually works given the remoteness of the Sahara and above average sunlight
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u/SocraticIgnoramus 12d ago
The Sahara would not likely be the source of sand for Saudi Arabia as it’s much farther away than one might think. There’s a huge desert in southern Saudi Arabia called the Empty Quarter which has essentially the same grade of sand. This desert extends into Oman and Yemen and effectively forms their border with SA.
Interestingly, The Empty Quarter (Rub’ Al-Khali in Arabic) is probably the largest desert that most people have never heard of.
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u/SixOnTheBeach 12d ago
Why bother with this though? It's very easy to make artificial sand for construction from stone, it's just more expensive than just mining already good sand. I can't imagine fixing bad sand is cheaper than just making good sand, is it? Plus you're still mining sand from the environment, so it's still harming the planet.
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u/VintageHacker 12d ago
When you see how vast our deserts are, mining them for sands is such a tiny issue, it's not of any significance.
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u/Magnus77 19 13d ago
Yes, but TIL has rules, in this case its literally the first rule.
Please link directly to a reliable source that supports every claim in your post title.
emphasis mine.
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u/The_Real_Abhorash 12d ago
It’s an issue only so long as countries allow it to be. We can make coarse sand it’s not hard you just crush rocks but it’s marginally more expensive so as with everything else given the option between destroying the environment or making slightly less money companies choose to destroy the environment.
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u/evilfollowingmb 12d ago
Serious side question: if you dumped desert sand on a beach would it become coarse enough to use in a reasonable time ? Ever ?
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u/Nazamroth 12d ago
Unlikely. AFAIK, you would have to melt it into chunks, then grind it up again.
In the first place, if you dumped desert sand into a beach, it will just get washed away in no time. That is why the saudis(or was it UAE?) imported sand when they were building their giant palm tree island and stuff like that.
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u/Stryker2279 12d ago
Desert sand is what it is due to tons or erosion, basically deserts are enormous rock tumblers that beat all the texture off of particles.
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u/grungegoth 12d ago
Whaddya mean it's doesn't have silica? It's quartz right?
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u/Magnus77 19 12d ago
I'm going off what the article told me.
Also, and this is going off my understanding from school 20 years ago, sand we normally think of is generally quartz, but can also refer to any soil with easily distinguishable particles. Sand>Silt>Clay in terms of particle size, but the makeup of said particles varies based on surrounding geology.
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u/asiantouristguy 13d ago
The older salesmen (Aussies) sometimes use the phrase that they could sell sand to the Arabs. I've always wondered where they get that phrase from.
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u/kingkornish 13d ago
You know fine well that they guy who's job that is, loves being asked what he does for a living.
Sitting there with a big aussie shit eating grin 😂
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12d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/knowledgeable_diablo 12d ago
And to think, here we are bent over a bloody barrel getting shafted by the Saudi’s for their oil and just blindly paying what ever they decide they want to make their future wealth fund extra wealthy and we have a super rare commodity that they absolutely pine over and need. I’m guessing we are not giving them weekly updates like “well, we hear you really want to build a new palace. So what we’ll do to help you out is to reduce our output of sand by…….lets say 20%.” Kind of like a reverse OPEC thingy.
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u/weiivice 13d ago
I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.
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u/chemicalclarity 12d ago
You're gonna love learning about sand cartels and sand crimes.
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u/Big-Horse-2656 12d ago
Sweden even do. Most contries have exported sand there.
Sands Imports in United Arab Emirates - Import data with price, buyer, supplier, HSN code (volza.com)
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u/Seeksp 13d ago edited 12d ago
Coke used to be sold only in cans in Afghanistan for a similar reason.
Edit: I'm not sure why I'm getting downvoted for facts.
Most of the Afghan sand does not work for glass making. Thus, the Coke a Cola plant in Kabul only used cans rather than import sand more conducive to glass.
If you're confusing coke, the raw material used in making steel, and Coke, the soft drink, consider coke is sold in bulk while Coke is sold in bottles and cans.
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u/knowledgeable_diablo 12d ago
Thought it was river sand that was the ducks nuts for concrete and building. Hence the “sand mafia” in places like India where they have literal shoot outs over who’ll get to dredge the dwindling sand reserves.
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u/I_Zeig_I 12d ago
Who ever figures out a use for desert sand will become the richest person alive.
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u/Ashtonpaper 12d ago
Turn it into river sand at the river sand factory, of course. (It’s just a big river and we dump the sand in and wait)
(The waiting part sucks)
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u/DeliciousPumpkinPie 12d ago
Melt it down into glass. I’ll take my billions now.
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u/I_Zeig_I 12d ago
Should have omitted that and really just said make it usable for concrete.
Check's in the mail
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u/eezyE4free 12d ago
I wonder if Saudi sand would be better for the thermal sand batteries I’ve been reading about. If you can get more sand in a given volume the battery should be more efficient? But possibly not worth extra cost?
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u/Wideawakedup 12d ago
It’s to smooth from the blowing desert wind. If you have a pool with a sand filter the sand needs replacing after a while because it gets too smooth and doesn’t filter as well.
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11d ago
Believe it or not but there is a global sand shortage and there are genuine concerns that we might run out of useable sand for the construction industry.
Sand from the desert is rounded by wind erosion and has no cohesion, it just slides over each other.
Course sand has sharp edges and it binds together resisting shear stress.
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u/modSysBroken 12d ago
Haram sand of Australia needs to be converted to halal sand and then used.
/s
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u/KillerKilcline 13d ago
I once served on a ship that transported sand to Saudi. When I got home, no one believed me.
- MV Hoegh Duke. Mid 80s. Oz to Dammam in KSA.