Alberta, Canada has the world’s third largest oil reserves within the form of oil sands. Extracting and processing the oil from the sands and bedrock is a challenging course of and requires the most important slurry pump in the oil sands industry.
When it comes to pumping slurry, there could be very few functions which would possibly be more difficult than the hydro-transport of heavy-duty slurries in oil sands production. Not solely do the pumps need to deal with the highly aggressive nature of the fluid being pumped, they are also anticipated to operate in some of the harshest environments on the earth.
In January 2020, GIW Industries, Inc., a KSB company, commissioned its largest ever heavy-duty centrifugal slurry pump for operation in Canada’s oil sands, specifically the Tie Bolt Construction (TBC-92). Named after its 92 in (2337 mm) impeller, the TBC-92 is the most important and heaviest slurry pump obtainable within the oil sands trade and the latest in a line of powerful high-pressure pumps supplied by GIW.
Slurry transportation Slurry transport covers a considerable range of trade sectors, ranging from meals and beverage to mining. What is frequent to all, is that the pumps used must have the flexibility to transport liquids containing particles and solids of varying sizes and viscosities. In mining, dredging and oil sands manufacturing, the biggest problem is to accommodate excessive density slurry and extremely abrasive grits.
It is crucial that the slurry passes by way of the pump with the minimum quantity of wear to the pump casing, impeller, shaft and sealing mechanism. Furthermore, the pump should be capable of delivering high flows and in a place to stand up to harsh working environments.
Alberta in Canada has extensive oil reserves and these are in the type of oil sands. Extracting and processing the oil from the sands and bedrock is challenging, involving the elimination of bituminous ore which is transported to a crushing plant. The crushed ore is then combined with heat water to form a dense slurry that can be transported within the pipeline in course of extraction, where the bitumen is separated from the sand and rock. After extraction, the remaining solids (or tailings) are sometimes transported by way of totally different pumps to settling ponds.
The processes require extensive use of slurry and water transportation pumps able to dealing with vast portions of liquids at excessive pressures and excessive temp- eratures. Drawing on its long experience of designing slurry pumps for mining, GIW has custom-engineered slurry pumps that mix superior supplies, hydraulics and patented mechanical designs, the latest of which is the TBC-92.
Meeting challenges Mollie Timmerman, GIW enterprise growth supervisor, explains extra: “Our shopper wanted the next capacity pump which was capable of 10,000–11,000 m3 per hour of output at practically 40 m of developed head and a most working strain of 4000 kPa. The pump also needed to have the ability to move rocks of roughly one hundred thirty mm in diameter with a total passage size requirement of 10 in (or 254 mm) and deal with slurry densities in extra of 1.5 SG.
In addition, the customer was focusing on a maintenance interval (operational time between deliberate maintenance) of around three,000 hours. They had expressed an interest in maximising the maintenance intervals and based mostly on preliminary put on indications, they are currently hoping to achieve around 6,000 hours between pump overhauls (i.e. 6–8 months).”
The instant application for the first batch of GIW’s TBC-92 pumps in Alberta is in hydro-transport service the place they’re used to move bitu- minous ore from the crusher to the extraction plant. pressure gauge 0 10 bar ราคา pumped is a mix of water, bitumen, sand, and large rocks. Screens are in place to keep these rocks to a manageable dimension for the method, however the prime size can nonetheless usually attain as a lot as one hundred thirty mm in diameter or bigger.
The abrasive nature of the slurry is what separates a slurry pump from other pumps used in the industry. Wear and erosion are details of life, and GIW has decades of experience within the design of slurry pumps and the development of materials to help prolong the service life of these crucial parts to match the deliberate maintenance cycles within the plant.
“GIW already had a pump able to the output requirement, this being the MDX-750, which has been a preferred dimension in mill duties for practically 10 years through- out Central and South America,” explains Mollie Timmerman. ”However, the customer’s software required a pump with higher strain capabilities and the potential of dealing with larger rocks so we responded with the event of the TBC-92 which offered the best resolution for maximised manufacturing.”
The TBC collection The construction style of GIW’s TBC pump range options large, ribbed plates held along with tie bolts for very high-pressure service and maximum put on performance. First developed for dredge service, then later launched into the oil sands within the Nineteen Nineties, the TBC pump sequence has grown into a completely developed vary of pumps serving the oil sands, phosphate, dredging and hard rock mining industries for tailings and hydrotransport applications.
The pumps are often grouped collectively in booster stations to build pressure as excessive as 750 psi (5171 kPa) to account for the pipe losses encountered over such lengthy distances. The robust building of the TBC pump is well suited to do the job, while making certain most availability of the gear beneath heavily abrasive put on.
Capable of delivering strain as a lot as 37 bar and flows of greater than 18,200m³/h and temperatures as much as 120o C, the TBC vary is a horizontal, end suction centrifugal pump that provides maximum resistance to put on. Simple to take care of, the pump’s tie-bolt design transfers stress loads away from the wear and tear resistant white iron casing to the non- bearing aspect plates with out the use of heavy and unwieldy double-wall construction.
The TBC-92 combines one of the best parts of earlier TBC fashions, together with the TBC-84 oil sands tailing pump, also identified as the Super Pump. The pump also incorporates options from GIW’s MDX product line, which is utilized in heavy-duty mining circuits throughout the world of exhausting rock mining.
In whole, the TBC-92 weighs about 209,000 lbs (95,000 kg), which is roughly equal to a fully-loaded Airbus A321 aeroplane. The casing alone weighs 34,000 lbs (15,500 kg). Key features of the pump embody a slurry diverter that dramatically will increase suction liner life by reducing particle recirculation between the impeller and the liner. The massive diameter impeller allows the pump to run at slower speeds so that wear life is enhanced. The lower velocity also provides the pump the power to function over a wider range of flows in order to accommodate fluctuating flow situations.
To make maintenance simpler, the pump is fitted with a special two-piece suction plate design which helps to cut back tool time and supply safer lifting. Customers obtain pump-specific lifting gadgets to facilitate the secure removing and set up of wear comp- onents. The pump additionally includes a longlasting suction liner that could be adjusted without needing to shut the pump down.
New milestone The commissioning of the TBC-92 marks an essential milestone for GIW, which now has pumps in service in any respect working Canadian oil sands plants for hydrotransport applications. The TBC-92 has been designed to deal with heavy-duty slurry transport while providing a low total cost of ownership. Minimal labour and maintenance time help to maximise production and revenue.
“This new pump incorporates the lessons realized from working within the oil sands over many years, and features our latest hydraulic and put on technologies,” says Mollie Timmerman. “Because that is the heaviest TBC pump we have ever designed, specific consideration was given to maintainability, in addition to material selection and building of the pressure-containing elements.”
That GIW has established itself as a significant pressure in pumping solutions for the oil sands business is much from surprising on condition that it has been developing pumping technologies and put on resistant supplies in the global mining industry since the Forties.
These pumps have had a considerable impression on the way in which that excavated sand, rock and bitumen are transported to the upgrader plant. By including water to the excavated material it becomes highly environment friendly to pump the slurry along a pipeline to the upgrader. The pipeline agitation assists in separating the bitumen from the sand as it’s transported, plus there may be the extra advantage of removing the use of trucks.
GIW has estimated that the cost of transferring oil sand in this method can minimize prices by US$2 a barrel, and it is much more environmentally pleasant. These pumps additionally play a major position in transporting the coarse tailings to the tailings ponds. GIW provides pumps used within the extraction course of and other areas of production (HVF, MDX, LSA).
Understanding slurries Understanding the character of slurries and how they behave when being pumped has been basic to the event of these merchandise. GIW has been acquiring slurry samples from customers over a few years for testing hydraulics and supplies each for pumps and pipelines. Research & Development amenities embrace multiple slurry test beds on the campus, together with a hydraulics laboratory that’s devoted to pump efficiency testing.
These activities are central to the company’s pump development programmes. If corporations are experiencing problems the GIW R&D personnel can see where the problem lies and provide advice for remedial action. Experience does point out that in plenty of instances the issue lies not with the pump however, however in the interplay between the pipeline and the pump.
Feedback from clients about appli- cations helps within the improvement of recent tools and pump designs. By bringing to- gether customers and lecturers from everywhere in the world to share their expertise and research with in-house consultants, the huge investment in analysis, improvement and manufacturing has superior the design of all the GIW pump merchandise,materials and wear-resistant parts.
The future “There is a transparent trend toward bigger pumps in mining and dredging and oil sands are no exception,” comments Leo Perry, GIW lead product manager. “The first TBC pump within the oil sands business was the TBC-46 (46 in being the diameter of the impeller). Customers are designing their amenities for greater and higher production and demanding the same of the gear that retains their manufacturing shifting. While these larger pumps demand extra power, in addition they permit for higher production with less downtime required for upkeep. Overall, the efficiency improves when in comparability with the same output from a bigger quantity of smaller pumps. “
In conclusion, he says: “Larger pumps go hand-in-hand with bigger amenities, bigger pipelines, and elevated manufacturing, all of which continue to pattern greater year after 12 months. Other customers and industries have also shown an interest in this measurement, and it would be no surprise in any respect to see extra of these pumps built within the close to future for similar purposes.”
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