At Face Slurrying: Advancing Tomorrow's Technology for Oil Sands Production

油砂行业正在见证数十亿美元的资本投资，这些投资要么是为了开发新矿山，要么是为了扩大现有矿山的生产规模，同时也为了将新技术引入该行业。这项新技术结合了大容量自卸卡车、铲子和水力运输技术，从露天开采中开采新的储量。与现有技术相关的资金和运营成本占总生产成本的30%以上。随着矿坑越来越深，生产地点越来越远离加工厂，由于运输距离长，将需要许多自卸卡车来满足生产目标。在油砂地形中，这些长距离的运输会造成严重的轮胎磨损，频繁的轮胎更换，更高的车队维护和管理问题，从而导致高生产成本。除了生产成本高外，柴油自卸卡车需要减少二氧化碳和其他废气污染物的排放，因此需要使用更高效、成本更低和更环保的技术。一个潜在的替代技术是“At Face slurry”（AFS）技术。这项技术主要涉及用灵活的管道系统取代运输卡车。该技术将通过一个灵活的管道系统与现有的水力运输系统连接，从生产面开采和运输油砂浆。

The oil sands industry is witnessing many multi-billion dollar capital investments to either open up new mines or increase the scale of production existing mines and also introduce new technologies into the sector. The new technology combines large-capacity dump trucks, shovels and the hydrotransport techniques to extract new reserves from open pit operations. The capital and operating costs associated with current technology account for over 30% of the total production cost. As pits become deeper and production faces advance further away from processing plants, many dump trucks will be required to meet production targets as a result of long haulage distances. In the oil sands terrain, these long haulage distances will cause severe tire wear, frequent tire replacements, higher fleet maintenance and management problems resulting in high production cost. In addition to high the production costs, the need to reducethe emissions of carbon dioxide and other exhaust pollutants from diesel dump trucks warrants the use of more efficient, less costly and an environmentally-friendly technologies. A potential replacement technology is the "At Face Slurrying" (AFS) technology. This technology basically involves replacing the haulage trucks with a flexible pipeline system. The technology will be used to mine and transport oil sands slurry from production faces through a flexible pipeline system to link the existing hydrotransport system.