Sensor development in oil sand processing

The extraction of oil from Alberta's Athabasca Oil Sand deposit is of great economic significance to Alberta and Canada. With the extremely large amount of material processed in an oil sand extraction operation, there are substantial gains to be made through small improvements in processing efficiencies. Understanding the process sufficiently well enough to employ model-based control is very difficult, not only because of the constantly changing nature of the oil sand entering the plant, but also because of the lack of available measurement systems which can reliably track the process. At Syncrude Canada Ltd., sensor development plays an important role in attempts to improve the process. This paper will discuss some of the problems faced by developers and describe three sensing applications currently under development.