Understanding and modelling the influences of plant operational parameters on equipment life cycle costs

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During a meeting with a senior executive of a major Canadian mining company the applicant was informed that their worldwide maintenance costs were 1.25 billion dollars. Historically mining has struggled to optimize maintenance activities, due in part to a lack of understanding/modelling of the link between operational practices and equipment life cycle. The applicant spent a one year sabbatical during which extensive time was spent working with the processing plant reliability group of a major oil sands company. During this tenure it became apparent that there is limited understanding and practically no models that allow maintenance decision makers to incorporate the influence of plant operational parameters on equipment maintenance and reliability. In fact this is true of mining process plants in general. An interesting observation with regards to oil sands is the integration of two industries oil production and mining. In your typical oil processing plant the operating environment is stable and plants will run for years without major outages. In a typical mining processing plant the equipment is subjected to a significantly more variable operating environment and consequently a higher frequency of maintenance outages. When you combine a mining environment with an oil processing plant the result is an extremely variable operating environment and plant maintenance costs in excess of 4 billion dollars per year for the existing operations in Fort McMurray, Alberta Given the significance of maintenance costs to the mining industry and the general lack of understanding/modelling of the link between operational parameters and equipment reliability, this research will focus on developing a fundamental understanding of the parameters and their influences and then work towards developing models and simulations to predict the influence of these operational parameters on plant process equipment reliability with the overriding goal of using this information to reduce equipment life cycle costs. To facilitate the research data from an oil sands operation has been/is being collected and will be used to develop the methodology and test the results. The methodology will then be applied to traditional mining operations.