Bitumen flow measurement at Oil Sand Facility

In a Canadian oil sand surface mine, the recovered oil is refined directly on site. One of the many processing steps involved is the thermal treatment of bitumen, so called cooking. In this operation, the bitumen flow needs to be measured at temperatures between 650°F and 700°F. Thus, the coker feed requires accurate monitoring and regulation of product input, which can only be accomplished by a reliable flow measurement. 

Moreover, clogged lines can easily cause a shutdown of the entire facility, leading to enormous downtime costs. In the past, Orifice or Vortex shedding meters were used for the detection of such line clogging. 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 FLEXIM's ultrasonic technology.

Fortunately for the customer, this test measurement revealed a underlying control valve failure. The refinery now uses the flow values delivered by the WaveInjector® in conjunction with a permanent FLUXUS ADM 7407 transmitter for a reliable and accurate mass balancing in the upgrader process.

Your Benefits:

• Easy installation under extreme conditions

• Straight forward installation with no need to open the pipe and no process-downtime

• No corrosion or wear to the system caused by the medium - thus a long operating life