PROFILES IN ACHIEVEMENT
Saskatchewan Research Council’s Pipe Flow Technology Centre in Saskatoon is celebrating its 60th anniversary.
The Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC) is Canada’s second largest research and technology organization.
The Company
With nearly 300 employees, $91 million in annual revenue and nearly 75 years of experience, SRC provides services and products to its 1,500 clients in 27 countries around the world.
The Achievement
SRC is celebrating the 60th anniversary of its Pipe Flow Technology Centre™ in Saskatoon. Pipe Flow, acknowledged as an international leader in its field, has contributed greatly to the needs and the advancement of the mining and oil and gas industries in Saskatchewan and Canada.
Established in 1960, Pipe Flow offers mining and other resource developers a unique opportunity to study slurries and test industrial samples and processes in a controlled environment that mimics the client’s actual operating conditions.
The data generated from this work is analyzed by the Centre’s experts to understand and improve the client’s field operations. This work is valuable to industry because of the difficulty trialling new technologies in live field operations.
Pipe Flow is also home to some of the world’s leading experts in slurry fluid mechanics, supported by a strong group of technologists. These two groups work together to design and run experiments, ensuring clients receive usable, high quality data.
In addition to providing pilot plant and slurry loop testing, Pipe Flow has developed mechanistic models to represent slurry flow behavior.
SRC offers courses in slurry pipeline systems which include training in the use of the SRC Pipe Flow Model. To date, Pipe Flow has trained more than 700 engineers in the use of the basic model and more than 100 in the more advanced multi-species model.
Pipe Flow also uses advanced instrumentation in its work to support the mining and oil and gas industries. SRC’s 2-D Gamma Ray Tomography (GRT) unit provides near real-time two-dimensional density readings of slurry flows, powerful information that Pipe Flow’s engineers use to improve understanding and modeling of complex flow behavior. As well, Pipe Flow is home to the Shook-Gillies High Pressure and High Temperature (HPHT) Facility, which provides experimental capabilities for volatile materials and HPHT operating conditions.
Since its founding, the Pipe Flow Technology Centre™ has conducted hundreds of slurry pipeline research and development programs and projects. This has included ground-breaking pipeline and fluid mechanics applications and projects for clients on topics such as oil sand mixtures, mineral slurries, and heavy crude oil mixtures.
All this important work has helped resource industries improve the efficiency and environmental performance of their operations.
The Team
This work is led by a team of engineers, scientists and technologists including Reza Hashemi, P. Eng., Lesley McGilp, P.Eng., Melissa McKibben, P. Eng., Ruijun Sun, P.Eng., and Ryan Spelay, P.Eng.