Industry Background

Oil sands are a type of petroleum deposit. They are essentially a type of sediment (rough sand) that contains oil in the form of bitumen that must be extracted by way of a filtration process. Sand in areas of Canada has oil in it, and oil and gas workers are sent out to remote locations to extraction sites to collect this oil.

There is typically a hopper at every oil sands extraction site, and it is responsible for separating the oil from the sands in part of the oil extraction process. We were called in to provide a seal solution for one of these hoppers.

Project Details

The manufacturer of a hopper in Canada needed an inflatable seal solution to provide a reliable seal between the filter box and hopper, but faced unique challenges in such a high-pressure, highly abrasive environment. Our fabric-reinforced seals offer the structural integrity and durability needed for this type of application.

The seal we manufactured for this project was as large as we could make it in one piece without splicing it. We used a rectangular G-12 cross section that’s multi-cornered and can fit an array of applications. Our engineering team has years of experience behind them to help them know what kind of tolerances different materials have, so we chose the right material that accounted for the large size and highly abrasive environment.

In addition to the seal, we also provided stainless steel retainers that would be able to withstand the abrasion and corrosion from the sand.