our work

collaborative approach leads to prompt permit issuance

When Tesoro Corp. decided to undertake an expansion project at its Mandan, North Dakota, refinery to increase production by nearly 20%, the company turned to Barr for assistance applying for an air quality “permit to construct.”

Our engineers worked with Tesoro staff to develop a permitting strategy that not only achieved compliance with all applicable state and federal permitting standards, but avoided major-source thresholds, expedited the construction schedule, maximized future operational flexibility, and minimized application expenses. Barr completed the permit application within three months, and regular communication with the North Dakota Department of Health and key stakeholders in Tesoro facilities nationwide helped secure a prompt regulatory review. The refinery received a permit to construct the expansion on a schedule that helped Tesoro take advantage of critical economic incentives. 

helping an oil sands client meet tailings-basin requirements

Barr teamed with Deltares, a Dutch non-profit research institute, to design and implement a bench- and pilot-scale test program to develop a low-shear method for placing non-segregating tailings (NST) at commercial scale with maximum fines capture and strength gain. The work is being completed as part of an oil sands client's continuing efforts to achieve compliance with Alberta's tailings-basin reclamation requirements, which state that basins must be trafficable after reclamation.

Bench-scale testing of NST mixtures was conducted to evaluate the segregating properties of coagulated tailings during different conditions. Barr and Deltares performed pilot-scale testing in an instrumented, custom-built, 25-meter flume to compare a traditional horizontal-discharge pipe to a low-shear tremie-diffuser. The purpose is to select a depositional method for commercial-scale delivery of NST in a way that meets the regulatory requirements. Barr and Deltares designed and supervised the fabrication of the flume and tremie-diffuser deposition systems and conducted all the experiments on this multi-phased project.

Barr and Deltares are currently conducting additional testing to evaluate the robustness of the deposition system for the anticipated variability in tailings produced by our client's plant. We also prepared a conceptual model and cost estimate for deploying tremie-diffusers at the end of a standard NST tailings pipeline.

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