Due to the coarse nature of the slurry, slurry pipelines in oil sands experienced serious wear issues
leading to high maintenance needs. Non-metallic piping components, rubber hoses and elastomer-lined
pipes, have been successfully introduced to oil sands through a material evaluation program and a
qualification process, contributing to extended wear life as well as safe and reliable operation of the
slurry pipelines. Currently, there are more than one hundred rubber hoses and approximately 15
kilometers of elastomer-lined pipelines at Syncrude. However, through 10+ years of operational and
maintenance experience with these systems, unique challenges were identified, including limited wear
monitoring capability and localized liner wear issue. Combined with limited wear monitoring
technologies, the current maintenance practices based on sampled data on pipe conditions could not
prevent pipeline failures completely. To reinforce pipeline inspection capability, a novel wear monitoring
technology based on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) was developed: this technology has been
successfully deployed for rubber hoses and further development is on-going for elastomer-lined pipes.
To get seamless information on pipeline conditions, different in-line inspection (ILI) technologies
including a mechanical caliper tool have been under evaluation. A mismatch in internal diameter at pipe
joints often caused localized liner wear, resulting in increased maintenance cost due to early retirement
of non-metallic pipes. A ‘replaceable ring’ concept was developed, where the sacrificial ring can be
rotated or replaced to extend the wear life of non-metallic piping components. As another approach of
addressing localized liner wear, an advanced repair technology using anchors was developed: by
installing anchors to the carbon steel substrate, significant improvement in adhesion could be achieved.