Simulation of Tar Sands Mining Operations

The energy crisis is upon us and new sources of energy must be tapped. One such pool is the vast reserves of the Athabasca Tar Sands in Alberta, Canada. Of the estimated 600 billion barrels of oil locked in the sands, 300 billion barrels are deemed recoverable. The problem has been to extract the oil by a method both feasible and economic.Syncrude Canada Limited is to mine this raw material plus overburden at a rate of approximately 150 million tons annually in order to extract 125,000 bbl/day of bitumen. The tarsand must ultimately be moved several miles to an extraction plant. The mining scheme decision involved a capital cost in excess of half a billion dollars.The productivity of five mining schemes, four using bucket wheel excavators and one using draglines, was investigated in 1973 using dynamic simulation. The simulation models, written in GPSS V and Fortran, consisted of five essentially independent modules: mining, transportation, storage, extraction, and weather. Approximately 10 runs were made for each scheme. Factors investigated included mining procedures, equipment availability, and equipment sizes.The simulation runs were a major factor in the final selection of the mining scheme. For the plan selected, numerous sensitivity runs were performed to improve details of the mining design. The model continues to be a valuable tool in debottle necking and the on-going refinement of the mining scheme.