Last week I was thinking about why the burners in boilers sometimes don’t work as well after they leave the shop. Over the summer, these boilers are cleaned and tested. When they leave the shop, the burners work just fine. Then the boilers go up to places like Fort Nelson…Hinton…Fox Creek. Operating in the winter … Read more
The rig was at a place so remote, it was outside the range of cellphone service. The toolpush had to drive out of the bush and then sit in his truck while we talked. His nearest connection with the world was 30 km away from the site. He called at 8 p.m. Friday night. They … Read more
For the construction of the Jackfish 2 plant in the boreal forest of Alberta, the client was hired to sandblast the insides of two oil tanks and install a protective coating. Two tanks were worked on simultaneously. The challenge was to keep the temperature of the steel above 15 degrees Celsius (59°F) in this cold … Read more
Driving north on Highway 63, on the stretch between Grasslands and Fort McMurray, the road gets unbelievably icy. When I make a trip and see only 4 flipped pickup trucks—I’m thinking, that’s very good. You can’t accelerate at 90, or your vehicle will go sideways. And if it flips, it slides, instead of doing a … Read more
If you want to heat two or more environments simultaneously, there’s a very good chance you’ll benefit from an optimized heating solution. Here is an example that involved two large storage tanks sitting side by side. This configuration requires the use of cube heaters. They have the necessary electronic mechanisms that can automatically keep the … Read more
For the construction of the Jackfish 2 plant in the boreal forest of Alberta, the client was hired to sandblast the insides of two oil tanks and install a protective coating. Two tanks were worked on simultaneously. The challenge was to keep the temperature of the steel above 15 degrees Celsius (59°F) in this cold … Read more