In a recent contract, Rotork’s facility at Calgary has fitted IQ3 intelligent electric actuators to fifteen gate valves, sized 42″, 48″ and 60″, and shipped them to the Suncor Fort Hills oil sands mine project in the Athabasca region of Alberta in Canada.
In addition to electric actuators supplied locally from Calgary, over 1,000 pneumatic actuators have been supplied by Rotork offices in Italy and South Korea. Operating gate, ball and triple offset butterfly valves, the actuators control the flow in applications including extraction, froth treatment, hydro-transport and primary refining, handling bitumen, slurry, water and steam.
The project is scheduled to achieve 90 percent of its planned production capacity of 180,000 barrels per day within 12 months. The mine life is expected to be approximately 50 years at the current planned production rate.