The selected pipeline wear measurements described here were collected from Syncrude Aurora's oil sand hydrotransport and coarse tailings pipelines over periods of operation between February 2005 and September 2006. Canadas vast oil sand reserves by mining the oil sand, then separating and upgrading the ultra-viscous crude oil or bitumen. At Syncrudes Aurora Mine, about 16000 tonnes oil sand per hour are mined and then transported 5 km by slurry pipeline to the extraction plant. The waste tailings stream is then transported about 10 km by pipeline to a settling sand storage basin. Oil sand slurries are reasonably concentrated (> 35% solids by volume), typically have a sand particle diameter between 0.18 and 0.3 mm, and are transported at reasonably high velocities (3 to 5.5 m/s). As one would expect, pipeline wear is a significant problem in this industry, in terms of both unplanned production outages and maintenance costs. In order to develop strategies to extend pipe life and to focus more on condition-based maintenance scheduling (as opposed to preventative maintenance), Syncrude has implemented an ongoing pipe wear measurement programme. Regular measurements of pipe wall thickness are obtained at various circumferential positions at a number of axial locations along each pipeline, using an ultrasonic scanning technique. The ultrasonic B-Scan technique provides reliable measurements of wall wear rates on operating slurry pipelines, and, as such, represents an important component of Syncrude's monitoring and preventative maintenance practices. In this paper, we show how wear rates vary as a function of axial location and circumferential position for oil sand hydrotransport and coarse particle tailings pipelines. The specific positions at which peak wear rates occur are explained by considering the characteristics of the coarse particle slurry flows to which the pipelines are exposed. The wear measurements reported here show that, as previously described in the literature, the particle contact load fraction is a key parameter in evaluating the wear performance of slurry pipe


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    Title :

    On-line wear measurements for commercial-scale, coarse-particle slurry pipelines


    Contributors:
    Schaan, J. (author) / Cook, N. (author) / Sanders, R.S. (author)


    Publication date :

    2007


    Size :

    10 Seiten, 5 Bilder, 12 Quellen



    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English




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