Oil Sands Operations: Pilot Plant Testing

Value of a Pilot Plant

Potential investors are faced with the decision of whether or not to invest, and how much to invest, in heavy oil projects. Production companies and their project partners must choose which technologies to bet their balance sheets on and then they must live with those choices. Historically, there has been little process related information, specific to their deposit, to help with such decisions.

Pilot plants are key tools for the oil sands industry to test technologies, flowsheets, ores, middling products and tailings. The objective of pilot testing is to optimize and improve recoveries, process efficiencies, process costs, product quality and product handling characteristics. In essence, a well-planned and well-run pilot plant is mitigates and manages technical project optimization and technical risk.

SGS has been assisting the minerals industry with such assessments for over half a century and has now brought that same decision-support capability to the heavy oil industry. As a third-party independent service provider, our mandate is three fold:

1. To provide asset holders and their investors, heavy oil producers, and government regulatory agencies with an opportunity to mitigate risk by evaluating new heavy oil sources, technologies, and processes at a pilot scale before committing to a large capital investment.
2. To give technology owners an opportunity to demonstrate technical and commercial viability so they can access capital more easily.
3. To offer a safe venue for operating companies to find ways to optimize their production and environmental processes, and to develop reliable production forecasting programs.

The Role of Pilot Plants

For the oil sands industry, the SGS pilot plant facility in Fort McMurray is a key platform for testing technologies. Here it is possible to test different and competing technologies in parallel. Our pilot plant is designed to be extremely flexible, and allows the incorporation of different process units at will.

Pilot plant testing demonstrates and confirms the flowsheet. It is unique in that it operates in an integrated fashion, all unit operations are run in series to provide continuous feed or product, typically until the generation of saleable heavy oil. Throughput can vary from < 100 kg/hr to > 2 tonne/hr.

Pilot Plant Activities

The following are typical activities that can be undertaken during pilot testing.

• Establish flowsheet viability and fine-tune flowsheet parameters. This is especially important for complex deposits, those utilizing new or unusual technologies or projects that are located in high risk areas
• Demonstrate continuous integrated operation
• Evaluate the impact of local water quality
• Develop a water balance
• Quantify the impact of ore variability and resulting flowsheet changes
• Produce byproducts for specialized testing (e.g. environmental assessments)
• Generate bulk samples for market evaluation
• Train critical plant staff

The Need for Flexibility

The flexibility and ability to test multiple technologies is the key difference between a pilot plant and a demonstration plant. A demonstration plant is built on a larger scale (relative to a pilot plant) but is configured with one fixed flowsheet. The objective of a demonstration plant is to show, over a long period of time, the result of a particular flowsheet and ensure a high degree of confidence. We have created a pilot facility that has the capability and capacity to operate multiple pilot projects simultaneously for projects focused in:

• Bitumen extraction
• froth treatment
• Related tailings and environmental strategies.

Scalability

There are several typical scales of testwork available. These include laboratory, pilot plant or demonstration plant. The laboratory scale is cheapest per test, but it is a big leap to the full scale process plant. Laboratory scale testing cannot test effects of recycle streams, middlings placement, water chemistry etc. These things are tested in a pilot plant and provide confidence that a test can be transferable to a full scale processing plant. However, a demonstration plant does not have the ability to test different options unlike the pilot plant.

Project Management

The key to the success of a pilot plant project is the application of key project management skills and methodologies that ensure that a pilot plant is run well and achieves technical targets on budget and on-time. A pilot plant provides the flexibility to permit a range of tests at a scale that is transferable to a full-scale process plant. The pilot plant can host different and competing technologies for testing.

SGS’ extensive piloting expertise that is second-to-none and a definitive set of safety protocols for the operation of pilot plants based on forty years of operational experience in Lakefield, Canada and at other piloting sites around the globe. From these hundreds of complex industrial pilot plants, we have developed effective planning skills, operational instructions and targets. Our complete set of documentation ensures successful operation, timely turnaround of sample analysis and rapid re-configuration of the circuit as required.

SGS’ Experience and Expertise

SGS’s established pilot plant in Fort McMurray draws on our 40 years of experience in pilot plant operations globally. We can provide all the pilot plant operation protocols/procedures and philosophy, as well as all the necessary skills and protocols in health, safety and environment, data management, data interpretation and final reporting. Our 2 ton per hour pilot plant brings a level of flexibility and applied research that has not been previously available in the oil sands. The SGS pilot plant enables routine, rigorous research and development in the oil sands industry at a scalable, pilot level.

Our plant was designed:

• To confidentially test new flowsheet designs, processes and equipment – in a scale beyond laboratory testing but less than demonstration plant volumes and capacity.
• To permit the commercial testing of new technologies and processes in extraction, tailings, and froth treatment.
• To test materials at a commercial scale, differentiating pilot testing activities from oil sands companies and government funded agencies’ existing R&D orientation.
• To optimize flowsheets and testing program to reduce technical risks on expensive processing projects.

SGS, with a global reputation in pilot plant operations and management is a neutral third-party host as well as the manager of the facility, the operations, and the technical data that is generated. We have longstanding experience in operating laboratories and pilot plants where confidential client intellectual property is an issue. Confidentiality is guaranteed, as integrity is a cornerstone of how SGS operates.

Research and Technology Working Together

SGS’ pilot plant facility fills a gap for the oil sands industry. Our pilot plant is complementary to research you might carry out in a university or research institute. The flexibility and independence of an SGS-managed pilot plant facility allows you to do more rigorous, focused and confidential testing with the ultimate benefit being optimized, cost effective processing technologies.