Abakan starts operations in Edmonton

Abakan Inc., advanced coatings and metal formulations company, has announced that it has begun operations at its joint-development facility in Edmonton, Alberta.

Abakan's subsidiary, MesoCoat Inc., along with the lead project partner, Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) will embark on an 18 month collaborative effort to establish a prototype demonstration facility for developing, testing and commercialising wear-resistant clad pipe and components. Western Economic Diversification Canada is also supporting this initiative through a CAN$ 1.5 million investment towards the NAIT.

Improvements in wear resistance are expected to make a significant impact in reducing maintenance and downtime costs while increasing productivity in oilsands and other mining applications.

Abakan shipped its CermaClad high-speed large-area cladding system for installation at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology's (NAIT) campus in Edmonton, Alberta in early 2015.

Despite delays associated with the installation of some interrelated equipment and machinery, the CermaClad system and other ancillary equipment are now installed at the Edmonton facility.

The Edmonton facility is intended to serve as a pilot-scale manufacturing facility for the development and qualification of wear-resistant clad pipes, and as a stepping stone for setting-up a full-scale wear-resistant clad pipe manufacturing facility in Alberta.

The new facility will also serve as a platform for Abakan's introduction to the Alberta oil sands market, which, with proven reserves estimated at more than 169 billion barrels, is one of the largest oil resources in the world and a major source of oil for Canada, the United States and Asia. Since Alberta oilsands production is expected to increase significantly over the next decade, producers want to extend the life of the carbon steel pipes used for the hydro-transportation of tailings with harder, tougher coatings that protect pipes from the abrasiveness of tar-like bituminous oilsands.

"Our aim is to fast-track market entry of our wear-resistant clad pipe products for the transportation of oil sands and mining slurries. We have received commitments from oil sands producers in Canada and mining companies in Mexico and Brazil to field-test CermaClad wear-resistant clad pipe products as soon as our system is ready for testing. Apart from our work with conventional less expensive chrome carbide and the more expensive tungsten carbide wear-resistant cladding on pipes, Abakan also expects to introduce new iron-based structurally amorphous metal (SAM) alloy cladding that in testing has exhibited better performance than tungsten carbide cladding, but at a fraction of the cost."

Robert Miller stated further that "although more expensive than the more widely used chrome carbide cladding, our new alloy cladding is expected to be a significantly better value proposition when you consider an estimated life of three times that of chrome carbide cladding and those cost efficiencies that correspond to less downtime revenue losses, and lower maintenance and replacement costs."

The costs associated with downtime and maintenance in the Alberta oilsands industry estimated at more than CAN$10 billion/yr are expected to grow as production expands, according to the Materials and Reliability in OilSands (MARIOS) consortium in Alberta. The development of Alberta's oil sands has been held up by the lack of materials for transport lines and components that are resistant to the highly abrasive slurry. Due to high abrasion, the pipelines have to be rotated every three to four months and replaced every 12 to 15 months. The costs involved just in rotating and replacing the pipes is approximately CAN$2 billion annually. The same is true of large components, for example the steel teeth on the giant electric shovels used to recover oil sands, must be replaced approximately every two days.

Edited from source by Elizabeth Corner

Read the article online at: https://www.worldpipelines.com/project-news/05062015/abakan-starts-operations-in-edmonton/