Innovation Anthology #267:
Water is an integral part of oil sands production.
So it’s no surprise corrosion from water was a major topic of discussion at OSHOW 2009.
That’s the Oil Sands and Heavy Oil Materials and Integrity Workshop hosted by the Alberta Research Council.
Brian Tkachuk is a maintenance and reliability specialist with Suncor Energy. He was also a co-chair of OSHOW 2009.
BRIAN TKACHUK: The corrosion causes corrosion scales to develop on the equipment which affects the heat transfer which affects the economic performance of the equipment.
The fowling and plugging also can lead to , higher pressure drops and therefore less flow. So that’s a concern. And, of course, corrosion can lead to leak failures, or worse, rupture failures. So there’s a lot of problems that the corrosion can cause and there’s a lot of different ways we can mitigate that with the injection of specialty chemicals to inhibit the corrosion. There are better materials, alloys, non-metallic materials that we can use And there’s even operating and maintenance strategies we talk about.
Brian Tkachuk says downtime from equipment failures costs the oil sands industry millions of dollar per day.
Thanks today to The Alberta Research Council.
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I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
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Alberta Research Council
Established as the first provincial research organization in Canada, the Alberta Research Council is 85 years old. The Alberta Research Council (ARC) develops and commercializes technologies to give customers a competitive advantage. A leader in innovation, ARC provides solutions globally to the energy, life sciences, agriculture, environment, forestry and manufacturing sectors.
ARC performs about five per cent of the roughly $1.5 billion in R&D done in Alberta each year, and generates revenues of approximately $84 million per year. ARC operates from five sites across the province in Edmonton, Calgary, Vegreville and Devon and employs more than 600 highly-skilled people.
In January 2010, under the new Alberta Innovation Framework, the Alberta Research Council was restructured and incorporated into the new provincial agency Alberta Innovates Technology Futures.
Program Date: 2009-11-05