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

油砂行业正在进行许多数十亿美元的资本投资，以开辟新矿或增加现有矿的生产规模，并将新技术引入该行业。这项新技术将大容量自卸卡车、铲子和水上运输技术结合在一起，从露天开采作业中提取新的储量。与现有技术相关的资本和运营成本占总生产成本的30%以上。随着矿坑变得更深，生产面临的问题离加工厂更远，由于运输距离长，许多自卸卡车将被要求满足生产目标。在油砂地形上，这些长距离的运输将导致严重的轮胎磨损，频繁的轮胎更换，较高的车队维护和管理问题，导致较高的生产成本。除了生产成本高之外，减少柴油自卸卡车的二氧化碳和其他废气污染物排放的需要需要使用更高效、更低成本和更环保的技术。一种潜在的替代技术是“在面部涂抹泥浆”(AFS)技术。这项技术基本上涉及用灵活的管道系统取代拖车。该技术将用于开采和运输生产工作面的油砂泥浆，通过一个灵活的管道系统连接现有的水运系统。

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.