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Process Tour
Come, Let's Tour our Oils Sands Pilot Plant in Fort McKay
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| Security Gate Protection and Sign In Ore is delivered to our Fort MacKay pilot plant complex and taken to the Back Orepad. We can receive up to several hundred of tons for each project. |
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| Ore Storage and Configurable Storage Units Once the sample arrives, it is received at our Ore Storage Building. It is immediately brought into this insulated building and stored at about -10°C. The sample is stored under insulated tarps to minimize oxidation and water loss. Four banks of fans circulate air to keep the bulk samples cold (visible on far right center of photo, end on). Movable concrete blocks are easily moved to accommodate several separate ore types. |
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| Crusher Prior to conditioning or bitumen extraction, the ore is loaded into a crusher fed at a nominal rate of 2 tons per hour. The undersize is then transferred to the Bitumen Extraction Building by conveyor and apron feeder system. |
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| Video Camera Monitoring in the Control Room The feed to the plant is monitored by a weight-o-meter and by video camera which is monitored in the Operations Control Room. This ensures a constant feed flow-rate. |
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| Ore Feed to Bitumen Extraction Building Once in the bitumen extraction building, the ore is monitored by Video camera in the Operations Control Room as it feeds into a digestion vessel. This can be a tumbler, tank or drum, dependingon your project needs. At this critical step of bitumen separation, hot water and/or steam can be added to digest the ore and separate the bitumen from sand. As well, some clients chose to add various reagents at this step. Depending on your test program requirements, we can easily accommodate many set-ups and technologies. |
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| Sampling the Digested Bitumen Slurry The digested bitumen slurry is readily sampled according to the project schedule to provide data for plant control and process optimization data. This is only one of the many possible sampling points in our plant. All plant samples are analyzed in our full-service laboratory in Fort McMurray. |
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| Samples Received at SGS McMurray Resources for Analytical Testing Our analytical facilities in Fort McMurray have 25 years of experience serving the oil sands community. They are well equipped for Dean and Stark analysis, particle size distribution as well as for ICP and gas chromatographic determinations. Here, your pilot plant testing needs get rapid turn-around times. |
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| Control Room This part of the circuit, as well as the rest of the pilot plant, is instrumented, monitored and run using the latest ABB distributed control system or DCS. Cabling from our master control centre spans the plant and connects to all our equipment. Our Control Room operators direct our plant operators in all day-to-day activities. This high level of instrumentation means that there is a permanent data record of all operating conditions, flow rates, temperatures, and reagent dosages. These data are then reconciled with our final concentrate grade and recovery. It is the key to your evaluation of test results and thus your overall process assessment. |
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