Hydrotransport system simulation modeling for Syncrude's North Mine

Abstract

ABSTRACT Syncrude Canada Ltd. presently mines 140 million tonnes per year of oil sand, 60 million of which comes from two mining areas nearing completion. These are the northeast and southeast which are currently mined using two 90 cubic yard draglines, two bucketwheel reclaimers and two feeder breakers utilizing 12 kilometres of 72 inch conveyors, feeding a common stockpile that supplies the extraction plant. With the completion of mineable reserves in the southeast in 1998, and the northeast in 1999, a new mine area will be opened to the northwest utilizing hydrotransport technology. This technology developed and field tested by Syncrude, consists of high density slurry preparation vessels and pipelines receiving feed from crushers that are fed by a shovel/truck fleet. When compared to a conveyor system which would eventually have required 57 kilometres and up to 34 flights of 72 inch conveyor, with attendant low utilization and high operating cost, hydrotransport has the potential to reduce transportation costs and at the same time enable digestion of the oil sand in the pipeline to the Extraction plant. A discrete event simulation program was developed and used to provide production volumes and statistics to assist in the selection and sizing of key elements of the integrated operation of the mining and “Hydrotransport” equipment, from the mine face, to the Extraction plant. This program can been used to establish shovel and truck fleet sizes, examine queue times at shovels and crushers, select crusher rate, determine hopper and intermediate bin sizes, and to enable system designers to focus on bottlenecks. Future applications of this toot include the modeling of the shovel/truck overburden fleet and integration of the overburden and ore transportation operations.