Challenges
Pipelines are critical for the safe, efficient transport of materials and commodities across expansive geographic areas. Using pipelines helps cut down the amount of fuel that alternative methods–such as tanker trucks or rail cars need–reducing serious pollution and greenhouse gases into the bargain. Pipelines also reduce the risk of accidents, as transporting both solid and liquid substances by rail, roads, and water can be dangerous to people, places, and things.
In the mining industry, asset owners are looking for improved recoveries and better ways to extract complex minerals. Slurry pipeline conveyance may be a cost-effective transportation method when distance is an issue, but it comes with great challenges. To improve recovery practices, new kinds of slurries need to be managed and new methodologies created that target the specific materials these slurries contain.
For the oil and gas and utility sectors, pipelines often connect production facilities directly to a wide range of industry and domestic customers. These especially need a sophisticated design to guarantee an uninterrupted supply that is safe and environmentally compliant. Integrity monitoring and automation have an important part to play in addressing these issues and must be factored into any modern pipeline system.
Pipeline solutions
Slurry pipelines
We design and optimize long-distance slurry pipelines globally, for any type of fluid or material. For effective system design and operation control, our hydraulic model can simulate pipelines involving rheological properties, settling speed, pipe thickness, and pumping capacity. Our expertise includes design studies, permitting, right of way, equipment and pipeline material selection, pressure integrity calculations to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) standard codes, and transient and flexibility analysis for all varieties of slurry transportation.
Water pipelines
Water scarcity and failing water infrastructure are serious, global issues. The recovery and reuse of water used for solids transportation is a key factor in most plants, leading to the need for a well-designed recovery water pipeline. Our experience includes long-distance seawater pipelines, saturated and unsaturated solutions pipelines with design pressures of up to 400 bar in one station. Using various modeling systems, careful material selection, and an understanding of pipeline equipment, we design pipeline networks that reliably support the conveyance system, while determining areas where resources and cost savings can be optimized.
Oil, gas, and multi-phase hydrocarbon pipelines
Pipeline networks are quintessential for the transmission and distribution of hydrocarbons. The pipeline transportation channel calls for sophisticated designs that enable an uninterrupted supply of fluid to move safely and in a way that's environmentally compliant. Typically, the focus is on integrity monitoring and automation.
Our expertise is comprehensive in all aspects of pipeline infrastructure, including compressor and pump stations, field devices, tie-ins, valve stations, trenching, and trenchless technologies. Let us help you minimize the risk of working in extreme environments and remote locations, increase stakeholder value, obtain necessary regulatory approvals, and maintain pipeline integrity.
Tailings pipelines
Managing thickened tailings and backfilling at processing plants and industrial facilities is one of the most pressing issues facing asset owners today. Safe, efficient, and reliable tailings pipelines are a critical component of larger tailings-management systems that help organizations like yours achieve operational, safety, and sustainability goals.
Paste backfill pipelines
The best backfill systems and material distribution-and-handling methods must be factored into plans for underground mines as early as possible. Find out more about our tailings and mine waste management solutions.