CONTRACTS


MINERALS


OIL & GAS POWER & INDUSTRIAL WEIRBULLETIN | FEBRUARY 2013


Weir Minerals wins contract to construct new product for major oil sands customer


Weir Minerals Hazleton recently received the final contract from Suncor Energy to fund the design and build of its new ‘Muncher’ unit. The award is the result of close collaboration between Weir Minerals Hazleton, Weir Minerals Canada and Suncor Energy.


The Muncher unit is designed to grind and


macerate organic brush and debris up to six inches in diameter along with non-organic discarded materials including metal and elastomer components used in oil sands mining and processing. The bitumen found in the oil sands of Alberta, Canada is separated and processed into usable crude oil. The Muncher unit will be installed in front of a hydraulically driven Weir Minerals Hazleton SCT heavy duty submersible slurry pump and the combination of the two components is expected to provide the solution required by Suncor Energy in recovering tailings ponds which have resulted from the bitumen recovery process. When the product has been tested and proven,


The ‘Muncher’ unit, developed for Suncor Energy


it will be available to the entire oil sands market as well as other markets faced with pumping extremely difficult clogging applications. Suncor Energy and others are faced with the challenging environmental clean-up of the tailings ponds that were created by flooding square miles of land that was never cleared. Tailings – known as MFT (mature fine tailings) – is difficult to pump as it consists of water, clays,


sand and residual bitumen. This material has viscous characteristics and is highly abrasive due to the sand content. Compounding this difficult pumping mixture is the residual organic material left in place when the land was flooded, along with discarded mining tools, cables and miscellaneous scrap materials. Currently no pump in the world can handle


the MFT removal process for a prolonged period. Weir Minerals pumps have been the most successful in this application so far and Suncor Energy was keen to design a lasting solution to pump the MFT from the ponds to mine recovery locations. Suncor Energy and Weir Minerals Hazleton


are cost sharing this prototype unit with Suncor providing all of the testing equipment and support alongside Weir Minerals field engineers on site to observe and make design adjustments based on the trial operation. The project is scheduled to start in Spring


2013. Tailwinds for Weir YES in Brasil and Italy


Two years of targeted effort in the emergent Brasilian wind energy


market has paid off for Weir YES after the business secured two projects with a multi-million pound value. The first project was awarded by utility Companhia Paulista de Força e Luz (CPFL) for the supply and installation of the IBEX 1000P ‘climb assistance’ technology on 172 wind turbines across a number of wind farms in the north of Brasil. With technicians required to climb 80 metre ladders in tropical weather conditions to access the ‘nacelle’ (which houses the internals of a wind turbine), the ‘climb assistance’ equipment will considerably reduce safety risks, as well as improving working conditions inside the turbine. The second project is in collaboration


with Makro Engenharia, a local company that develops movement engineering solutions and has been awarded the construction and installation of 106 General Electric 2.5MW turbines in Brasil. Under its subsidiary Makro Wind – a provider of windfarm operations and maintenance


services – Makro Engenharia has been investing heavily in the sector. It has been acquiring specialist equipment such as a 1,200 ton telescopic crane and crawler cranes of up to 750 tons and in 2012 invested $1.2 million setting up a multi-discipline training centre. The centre will provide operators with the skills they require to execute turnkey projects and provide complete solutions in transportation, installation and assembly. Weir YES will complete electrical and


mechanical works inside the turbine, which requires highly skilled field personnel. The business has also been awarded an operations and maintenance (O&M) contract in Italy with a total output capacity of 106MW. This brings Weir YES’s total turbine capacity O&M profile in Italy to over 250MW. The projects in Brasil and Italy position


Weir YES as a significant supplier of products and services to the wind energy sector of both countries.


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