It's Far From Easy
Extracting oil sand is far from an easy job. The workers of Fort McMurray are on-site be it summer or winter. This means that they have to endure temperature differences of up to 70 degrees Celsius within one year. In summer, they often have 30 degrees Celsius and in winter up to minus 40 degrees.
In order to enable production without downtimes, the excavation and construction vehicles, as well as the handling and refinery plants, have to be fitted with robust, long-lasting and, above all, reliable components.
For this reason and also because of the required availability, Voith Turbo drives are used in Alberta. Voith Turbo contributes to the processing of oil sand in crushers and conveyor belts with outputs of up to 1,500 HP. In double-roll crushers, the tar sand carried by the dumpers is crushed and then transported on conveyor belts for further processing.
Huge Crushers and Voith
Variable-Speed Couplings
The crushers are as high as an eight-story apartment house and need drives that allow them to start smoothly and accelerate to the required speed, even when fully loaded. This task is carried out by constant-fill Voith turbo couplings that also dampen torsional vibrations and protect components mechanically by limiting the transmittable maximum outputs.
After the initial crushing of the tar sand, the material is transported for several kilometers on belt conveyors operating with Voith coupling technology. In further processing stages, the bitumen is dissolved from the sand in hot steam and then transferred to the refinery via a pipeline. Visit www.voithturbo.com for more information.
Canada, Saudi Arabia and Iran dispose of the largest oil reserves in the world, partly stored in sand.
