… Measurement of Bitumen
at an Oil Sand Facility
In a Canadian oil sand surface mine
recovered oil is refined directly on site.
One of the many processing steps is
thermal cracking. Optimally feeding the
upgraded bitumen into the thermal
cracker requires accurate monitoring and
regulation of product input which can only
be accomplished by reliable flow measurement.
Some flow meters are also used
for detection of line clogging. Clogged
lines can easily cause a shutdown of the
entire facility, leading to enormous downtime
costs. In the past such measurements
were done with differential pressure
methods or vortex shedding meters. Like
all inline measuring instruments, these
were subject to wear and tear and demanded
daily maintenance.
Non-intrusive flow measurement proved
to be a significantly better solution. A test
measurement, using the WaveInjector®
together with a portable transmitter on
a 6" pipe carrying hot VAC tower residue
demonstrated the superiority of ultrasonic
technology.
Fortuitously for the customer, this test
measurement revealed a control valve
failure.
The refinery now uses the flow values
delivered by the WaveInjector® for a
reliable mass balancing in the upgrader
process.
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