At any high-volume mining operation, equipment reliability is key. Yet the abrasive nature of the sand in oil sands ore means that these operations in particular face higher rates of maintenance and reliability issues.

“The cliché is that one tonne of sand needs to be processed to produce one barrel of oil, and [oil sands operators] produce thousands of barrels of oil a day,” said Gary Fisher, program director of InnoTech Alberta’s MARIOS program, which aims to improve equipment reliability and materials at Alberta’s oil sands operations. “That’s an awful lot of sand to process, so equipment wears out in a fast fashion.”

Northern Alberta’s climate adds another maintenance burden, with wear rates increasing in the winter as the ore freezes and consolidates. These conditions push operating equipment to its limit, creating massive repair and replacement costs for operators, such as the teeth of shovels and excavators, dozer undercarriages and haul truck tires.

“In the winter, in particular, there are very harsh wear operating environments [at oil sands operations],” Fisher said. “[Shovel] teeth can have a service life as short as 12 to 24 hours, costing somewhere between $25 to $30 million a year for the industry.”

When multiple breakdowns occur or occur repeatedly, this leads to massive productivity losses for the sector, according to figures from the mine operators. “The costs related to equipment reliability and lost production [at oil sands operations] in the province are about $10 billion a year,” Fisher explained. “Around $4 billion of that is related directly to the equipment, with $6 billion related to loss of production.”

The MARIOS consortium aims to tackle these operational reliability and productivity issues. InnoTech Alberta, a research and technology subsidiary of provincially funded agency Alberta Innovates, established the consortium in 2008, after being approached by an oil sands operator. “[They] came to us with the idea that there were enough joint issues within the industry that it would make sense [to come] together to help solve them in a collaborative fashion, and they wanted InnoTech to facilitate this process,” Fisher said.

MARIOS covers a number of focus areas, including advanced manufacturing, corrosion and wear monitoring. Fisher, a trained materials engineer, leads its mining equipment focus, which includes looking at improving the reliability and longevity of mobile equipment such as dozers and shovels. “It’s unique in the sector—I don’t believe there’s any other industrial consortium focused on equipment, reliability and longevity issues,” Fisher said.

The consortium, which reached 50 members last year, includes oil sand producers like Suncor Energy and Imperial Oil, as well as materials and equipment suppliers, fabricators and technology providers. Significant support for the consortium is provided by collaborative Canadian organizations, such as the National Research Council Canada and Next Generation Manufacturing Canada, as well as international players in the sector, like the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia and the Henry Royce Institute in the United Kingdom.

From the outset of the formation of MARIOS, it was critical that supply chain companies—including equipment suppliers and manufacturers, as well as service companies—be involved. “What they wanted to avoid was lots of great work being conducted and solutions developed, and then they’re not able to buy anything because no one in the supply chain was part of the process,” Fisher explained.

Collaborative approach

A key component of the consortium’s work is collaboratively developing new knowledge and validating existing technologies from other sectors. When an oil sands operator identifies a high-priority issue and brings it to MARIOS, the consortium organizes a project to tackle it, with members from InnoTech Alberta, relevant research agencies and supply chain companies in the same space.

“We then look to identify near-commercial or commercial solutions that can be quickly brought into the industry to help solve that particular issue,” Fisher said. “Why this is important to the mining industry is that while they have very talented teams of engineers, they tend to be very operations focused, so they’re solving the issues of that day rather than looking for the most impactful solutions.”

According to Fisher, while the consortium often looks to other sectors for potential solutions that can be adapted for the oil sands and mining industry, it also develops new solutions when there is a clear technology gap. “In really extreme wear environments [such as for crushing hammers, sizing screens and ground engaging tools], the material you use is something called sintered tungsten carbide tiles,” Fisher explained. “The problem is while the wear resistance is really good, the attachment methods didn’t allow for very reliable service. In simple terms, they had a tendency of falling off.”

With no clear solution commercially available, MARIOS collaborated with a materials research network in the U.K., universities in Canada and the manufacturing sector in Alberta to develop a new process for manufacturing the material. “The new advanced manufacturing process [enables] a far improved attachment method for these materials [that is] at least twice as good as what was previously available,” Fisher said. “It has been commercialized this year and is already selling into the mining sector as a whole.”

While the consortium was established with oil sands operations in mind, its work is increasingly relevant to the rest of the mining industry. “We now realize that with the drive for critical metals and minerals, all the production issues that were affecting oil sands are now affecting other types of mining as well,” Fisher said. “To meet the production needs of the industry, they’re having to drive their equipment harder and faster. So all the wear issues we’ve been solving for years here are now suddenly applicable to potash and more.”

The benefits of collaborating through this sort of consortium are numerous, according to Fisher. The first is that project work is more efficient and effective with multiple partners, as opposed to one company shouldering the work. “The intention is having something that is a practical solution at the end,” he said. “It’s still the case for a lot of these things that there’s no commercial advantage for one company to try to solve it themselves.”

This is particularly helpful when companies do not have their own research and development departments; instead, they can rely on the MARIOS network for support.

In addition to the goal of designing solutions for commercialization, consortium members also benefit from the fact that the majority of the consortium’s work is available for them to access. “The consortium has an ‘all rise up together’ approach,” Fisher said. “Any intellectual property developed in a program year is accessible to all the members.”

Future plans

InnoTech Alberta co-launched the Alberta Advanced Manufacturing International Hub in April this year, along with Alberta Innovates and the University of Alberta. The new hub will collaborate with other innovation hubs worldwide, such as in Australia, Japan, the U.K. and Germany, to develop and deploy new technologies, including in the mining industry to support activities in the MARIOS consortium. “If you’re working with people with unique capabilities around the world, it’s so much quicker and more successful,” Fisher said. “You also have access to different types of funding and capabilities.”

According to Fisher, MARIOS has some more exciting projects coming up. The mining equipment team will be working on inspection and monitoring equipment at mine sites, such as improving the use of drone inspection of mining equipment through fully automated systems. The consortium also plans to launch a new program to provide technical training to mining companies and is creating a professional network group specifically for welding at mine sites.

As mining companies will need to put greater focus on a sustainable supply chain, improving the reliability and productivity of equipment is essential. “With the changes in energy and technology requirements in the world, lots of the materials that you need for mine operations are being used for these other technologies as well,” Fisher explained. “So it’s really important to both increase the repairability and refurbishment of equipment so you’re not constantly using new. If we can repair and reuse and be more mindful of where we’re getting materials and equipment from, I think that only makes sense for a more efficient, productive process.”

For Fisher, the collaboration within MARIOS is not only a key reason for its success thus far, but is also his favourite part of the job.

“It’s really exciting to bring people [together] and create these networks from around the world [to try] to solve a problem,” he said. “People might be in the Australian mining industry or the German coal industry and are comparing notes to see if we can help each other. [It’s] very satisfying when you think we were presented with a problem, we gained understanding, and then we presented a practical solution that people then developed into a new standard.”