Tag Archives: Alberta tar sands

Abakan makes good on Alberta (Canada) promise (coating for better pipeline transport of oil)

It took three years but it seems that US company Abakan Inc.’s announcement of a joint research development centre at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT), (mentioned here in a May 7, 2012 post [US company, Abakan, wants to get in on the Canadian oils sands market]), has borne fruit. A June 8, 2015 news item on Azonano describes the latest developments,

Abakan Inc., an emerging leader in the advanced coatings and metal formulations markets, today announced that it has begun operations at its joint-development facility in Edmonton, Alberta.

Abakan’s subsidiary, MesoCoat Inc., along with the lead project partner, Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) will embark on an 18-month collaborative effort to establish a prototype demonstration facility for developing, testing and commercializing wear-resistant clad pipe and components. Western Economic Diversification Canada is also supporting this initiative through a $1.5 million investment toward NAIT. Improvements in wear resistance are expected to make a significant impact in reducing maintenance and downtime costs while increasing productivity in oil sands and other mining applications.

A June 4, 2015 Abakan news release, which originated the news item, provides more detail about the proposed facility, the difficulties encountered during the setup, and some interesting information about pipes,

Abakan shipped its CermaClad high-speed large-area cladding system for installation at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology’s (NAIT) campus in Edmonton, Alberta in early 2015. Despite delays associated with the installation of some interrelated equipment and machinery, the CermaClad system and other ancillary equipment are now installed at the Edmonton facility. The Edmonton facility is intended to serve as a pilot-scale wear-resistant clad pipe manufacturing facility for the development and qualification of wear-resistant clad pipes, and as a stepping stone for setting-up a full-scale wear-resistant clad pipe manufacturing facility in Alberta. The new facility will also serve as a platform for Abakan’s introduction to the Alberta oil sands market, which, with proven reserves estimated at more than 169 billion barrels, is one of the largest oil resources in the world and a major source of oil for Canada, the United States and Asia. Since Alberta oil sands production is expected to increase significantly over the next decade, producers want to extend the life of the carbon steel pipes used for the hydro-transportation of tailings with harder, tougher coatings that protect pipes from the abrasiveness of tar-like bituminous oil sands.

“Our aim is to fast-track market entry of our wear-resistant clad pipe products for the transportation of oil sands and mining slurries. We have received commitments from oil sands producers in Canada and mining companies in Mexico and Brazil to field-test CermaClad wear-resistant clad pipe products as soon as our system is ready for testing. Apart from our work with conventional less expensive chrome carbide and the more expensive tungsten carbide wear-resistant cladding on pipes, Abakan also expects to introduce new iron-based structurally amorphous metal (SAM) alloy cladding that in testing has exhibited better performance than tungsten carbide cladding, but at a fraction of the cost.” Robert Miller stated further that “although more expensive than the more widely used chrome carbide cladding, our new alloy cladding is expected to be a significantly better value proposition when you consider an estimated life of three times that of chrome carbide cladding and those cost efficiencies that correspond to less downtime revenue losses, and lower maintenance and replacement costs.”

The costs associated with downtime and maintenance in the Alberta oil sands industry estimated at more than $10 billion a year are expected to grow as production expands, according to the Materials and Reliability in Oil Sands (MARIOS) consortium in Alberta. The development of Alberta’s oil sands has been held up by the lack of materials for transport lines and components that are resistant to the highly abrasive slurry. Due to high abrasion, the pipelines have to be rotated every three to four months and replaced every 12 to 15 months. [emphasis mine] The costs involved just in rotating and replacing the pipes is approximately $2 billion annually. The same is true of large components, for example the steel teeth on the giant electric shovels used to recover oil sands, must be replaced approximately every two days.

Abakan’s combination of high productivity coating processes and groundbreaking materials are expected to facilitate significant efficiencies associated with the extraction of these oil resources. Our proprietary materials combined with CermaClad large-area based fusion cladding technology, have demonstrated in laboratory tests a three to eight times improvement in wear and corrosion resistance when compared with traditional weld overlays at costs comparable to rubber and metal matrix composite alternatives. Abakan intends to complete development and initiate field-testing by end of year 2016 and begin the construction of a full-scale wear-resistant clad pipe manufacturing facility in Alberta in early-2017.

Given that there is extensive talk about expanding oil pipelines from Alberta to British Columbia (where I live), the information about the wear and tear is fascinating and disturbing. Emotions are high with regard to the proposed increase in oil flow to the coast as can be seen in a May 27, 2015 article by Mike Howell for the Vancouver Courier about a city hall report on the matter,

A major oil spill in Vancouver waters could potentially expose up to one million people to unsafe levels of a toxic vapour released from diluted bitumen, city council heard Wednesday in a damning city staff report on Kinder Morgan’s proposal to build a pipeline from Alberta to Burnaby [British Columbia].

In presenting the report, deputy city manager Sadhu Johnston outlined scenarios where exposure to the chemical benzene could lead to adverse health effects for residents and visitors, ranging from dizziness to nausea to possible death.

“For folks that are on the seawall, they could be actually struck with this wave of toxic gases that could render them unable to evacuate,” said Johnston, noting 25,000 residents live within 300 metres of the city’s waterfront. “These are serious health impacts. So this is not just about oil hitting shorelines, this is about our residents being exposed to very serious health effects.

  • Kinder Morgan’s own estimate is that pipeline leaks under 75 litres per hour may not be detected.

While I find the presentation’s hysteria a little off-putting, it did alert me to one or two new issues, benzene gas and when spillage from the pipes raises an alarm. For anyone curious about benzene gas and other chemical aspects of an oil spill, there’s a US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) webpage titled, Chemistry of an Oil Spill.

Getting back to the pipes, that figure of 75 litres per hour puts a new perspective on the proposed Abakan solution and it suggests that whether or not more and bigger pipes are in our future, we should do a better of job of protecting our environment now. That means better cladding for the pipes and better dispersants and remediation for water, earth, air when there’s a spill.

Carbon Management Canada announces research for an affordable CO2 nanosensor

Researchers at the University of Toronto (Ontario) and St. Francis Xavier University (Nova Scotia) have received funding from Carbon Management Canada (a Network Centre for Excellence [NCE]) to develop an ultra-sensitive and affordable CO2 nanosensor. From the Feb. 4, 2013 news item on Nanowerk,

Researchers at the Universities of Toronto and St. Francis Xavier are developing an affordable, energy efficient and ultra-sensitive nano-sensor that has the potential to detect even one molecule of carbon dioxide (CO2).

Current sensors used to detect CO2 at surface sites are either very expensive or they use a lot of energy. And they’re not as accurate as they could be. Improving the accuracy of measuring and monitoring stored CO2 is seen as key to winning public acceptance of carbon capture and storage as a greenhouse gas mitigation method.

With funding from Carbon Management Canada (CMC), Dr. Harry Ruda of the Centre for Nanotechnology at the University of Toronto and Dr. David Risk of St. Francis Xavier are working on single nanowire transistors that should have unprecedented sensitivity for detecting CO2 emissions.

The Carbon Management Canada (CMC) Feb. 4, 2013 news release, which originated the news item, provides  details about the funding and reasons for the research,

CMC, a national network that supports game-changing research to reduce CO2 emissions in the fossil energy industry as well as from other large stationary emitters, is providing Ruda and his team $350,000 over three years. [emphasis mine] The grant is part of CMC’s third round of funding which saw the network award $3.75 million to Canadian researchers working on eight different projects.

The sensor technology needed to monitor and validate the amount of CO2 being emitted has not kept pace with the development of other technologies required for carbon capture and storage (CCS), says Ruda.

“This is especially true when it comes to surface monitoring verification and accounting (MVA),” he says. “Improving MVA is essential to meet the potential of carbon capture and storage.”

And that’s where the ultra-sensitive sensor comes in. “It’s good for sounding the alarm but it’s also good from a regulatory point of view because you want to able to tell people to keep things to a certain level and you need sensors to ensure accurate monitoring of industrial and subsurface environments,” Ruda says.

Given CMC’s vision for ‘game-changing research to reduce carbon emissions’, it bears noting that this organization is located in Calgary (the street address ‘EEEL 403, 2500 University Drive NW Calgary‘ as per my search today [Feb.4.13] on Google [https://www.google.ca/search?q=CMC+address+Calgary&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a] suggests the University of Calgary houses the organization). Calgary is the home of the Canadian fossil fuel industry and a centre boasting many US-based fossil fuel-based companies due to its size and relative proximity to the Alberta oil sands (aka, Athabaska oil sands). From the Wikipedia essay (Note: Links and footnotes have been removed),

The Athabasca oil sands or Athabasca tar sands are large deposits of bitumen or extremely heavy crude oil, located in northeastern Alberta, Canada – roughly centred on the boomtown of Fort McMurray. These oil sands, hosted in the McMurray Formation, consist of a mixture of crude bitumen (a semi-solid form of crude oil), silica sand, clay minerals, and water. The Athabasca deposit is the largest known reservoir of crude bitumen in the world and the largest of three major oil sands deposits in Alberta, along with the nearby Peace River and Cold Lake deposits.

Together, these oil sand deposits lie under 141,000 square kilometres (54,000 sq mi) of boreal forest and muskeg (peat bogs) and contain about 1.7 trillion barrels (270×109 m3) of bitumen in-place, comparable in magnitude to the world’s total proven reserves of conventional petroleum. Although the former CEO of Shell Canada, Clive Mather, estimated Canada’s reserves to be 2 trillion barrels (320 km3) or more, the International Energy Agency (IEA) lists Canada’s reserves as being 178 billion barrels (2.83×1010 m3).

As for locating a carbon management organization in Calgary, it does make sense of a sort. Here’s a somewhat calmer description of Carbon Management Canada on the website’s About CMC page,

Carbon Management Canada CMC-NCE [Network Centre for Escellence] is a national network of academic researchers working with experts in the fossil energy industry, government, and the not-for-profit sector. Together, we are developing the technologies, the knowledge and the human capacity to radically reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the fossil energy industry and other large stationary emitters.

Carbon emissions and the growing global concern about its effects present a unique opportunity for innovation and collaboration, especially in the fossil energy industry. Rapidly increasing global complexity demands robust, responsive innovation that can only develop in a highly collaborative context involving industry, scientists, policy makers, politicians and industry leaders in concert with an informed, supportive public.

Carbon Management Canada is the national body charged with harnessing the collective energy of this diverse group in order to push forward an ambitious agenda of innovation and commercialization to bring research from the lab into the world of practice.

Funding

Funding for CMC was provided through the federal Networks of Centres of Excellence ($25 million) and the Province of Alberta through Alberta Environment ($25 million). Industry has also provided $5.7 million in contributions.

The Network has over 160 investigators at 27 Canadian academic institutions and close to 300 graduate and postdoctoral students working on research projects. CMC currently has invested $22 million in 44 research projects.

Our Themes

CMC is an interdisciplinary network with scientists working in fields that range from engineering to nanotechnology to geoscience to business to political science and communications. These investigators work in 4 themes: Recovery, Processing and Capture; Enabling and Emerging Technologies; Secure Carbon Storage; and Accelerating Appropriate Deployment of Low Carbon Emission Technologies.

Given that CMC is largely government-funded, it seems odd (almost as if they don’t want anyone to know) that the website does not feature a street address. In addition to trying  a web search, you can find the information on the last page of the 2012 annual/financial report. One final note, the chair of CMC’s board is Gordon Lambert who is also Vice President, Sustainable Development, Suncor Energy. From Suncor’s About Us webpage,

n 1967, we pioneered commercial development of Canada’s oil sands — one of the largest petroleum resource basins in the world. Since then, Suncor has grown to become a globally competitive integrated energy company with a balanced portfolio of high-quality assets, a strong balance sheet and significant growth prospects. Across our operations, we intend to achieve production of one million barrels of oil equivalent per day.

Then, there’s this on the company’s home page,

We create energy for a better world

Suncor’s vision is to be trusted stewards of valuable natural resources. Guided by our values, we will lead the way to deliver economic prosperity, improved social well-being and a healthy environment for today and tomorrow.

The difficulty I’m highlighting is the number of competing interests. Governments which are dependent on industry for producing jobs and tax dollars are also funding ‘carbon management’. The fossil fuel-dependent industry make a great deal money from fossil fuels and doesn’t have much incentive to explore carbon management as that costs money and doesn’t add to profit. Regardless of how enlightened any individuals within that industry may be they have a fundamental problem similar to an asthmatic who’s being poisoned by the medication they need to breathe. Do you get immediate relief from the medication, i.e., breathe, or do you refuse the medication which causes damage years in the future and continue struggling for air?

All of these institutions (CMC, Suncor, etc.) would have more credibility if they addressed the difficulties rather than ignoring them.