Professors Patricio Mendez and Adrian Gerlich. First stop at the Discovery Centre where there is an organised display of the "oil sand" deposits in Alberta and the process that leads to refined petroleum.
Thick bitumen is extracted from the oil snad and upgraded into petroleum
The complex microstructure of oil sand
There is a huge reserve of oil in Alberta's oil sands, comparable to the entire reserves of Saudi Arabia
The origin of oil sands
Core sampling drill.
A bucket used to dig out the sand. This is a small bucket.
The bucket teeth.
A bucketwheel excavator
The structure behind the humans is a huge truck used to carry the sand
The powerhouse of the 400 tonne truck
Compare the size of an ordinary car tyre against that of the truck. Each of the tyres of the truck costs about 60,000 dollars
The tooth on the left is at the beginning, and the one on the right after it has been worn down by abrasive oil sand
The wear is in spite of the hard layer deposited on the tooth.
Patricio at the helm of the giant truck
The oil sand dug out from open cast mines is processed through thinning, floatation and refinement to extract the oil. Another method involves pumping hot steam to underground layers of oil sand, and to pull out the liberated oil from the other pipe.
This is an electrical socket to power heavy equipment.
The different companies involved in the extraction processes
Arrival at the Suncor oil sand mine near Fort McMurray, Alberta. This was the first such mine in Canada.
Refinery in the background
Refinery in the background
We needed a robust truck to tour the mine. The first step was for Professors Mendez and Girlich to overcome the intelligent theft prevention system which did not allow the truck to start.
Patricio, pretending to help Adrian
Help eventually arrived and we were off.
The black material in the backgrond is the stockpile of oil sand
The sulphur is extracted during the process. The yellow mountain in the background is the accumulated sulphur as a by-product from the oil extraction process, awaiting sale.
Heavy trucks, typically 400 tonnes, transport the sand. Slurries are pumped through steel pipes.
One of the digging buckets, just refurbished with hard, Cr-rich alloy deposited on the lower half of the bucket. The green teeth are engineered for easy replacement when they are worn after a few days of service.
The lower halves of the vertical edges are coated with a tungsten-carbide/nickel alloy for additional wear resistance.
