Oil Sands Solutions for Cleaning &
Degreasing Heavy Equipment
Whether you need to clean heavy haul trucks, scavenge H2S, or remove process deposits,
Guardian Chemicals offers effective solutions for your oil sands mining operation.
Every Process Can Be Improved
Your industry is tough on its equipment. Fast, effective chemistry—and a preventative maintenance schedule—make or break the overall efficiency of your operations. In addition, shutdowns and turnarounds need to be completed as quickly as possible, as hours offline add up to significant losses. To keep your operations at peak performance, you need the right solutions.
Industry-Tested & Approved
Combining science & service for solutions that redefine peak performance
Your oil sands operations hinge on everything running smoothly. But equipment requires maintenance, and you don’t have time to waste on solutions that require days of downtime or only fix issues in the short term. As your chemical partner, we do more than send you cleaners and degreasers. We send experts into the field to look at your unique challenges and design programs that bring more efficiency throughout your operations.
Solutions
Cleaning & Degreasing
The equipment and vehicles needed for oil sands operations get put through a lot. To keep them working safely and efficiently, they need to be cleaned and repaired regularly. We specialize in reducing the overall costs of maintenance and turnarounds for all your equipment and machinery by developing new chemical formulations and more effective field cleaning procedures.
Oil & Gas Production Enhancement
Scavengers & Degassing
H2S and LEL control is critical to your operations both onsite and as part of transportation. Whatever inspection schedule you’re on, we can ensure that your tanks are cleaned of fumes quickly, effectively, and safely with our scavenging solutions.
Sanitizing & Disinfecting
It’s more important than ever to ensure you’re taking steps to protect the health and well-being of your workers. Viruses, bacteria, and fungi can stay on surfaces from hours to days, which is why we have developed a wide variety of hard surface cleaners, sanitizers, and disinfectants to ensure the cleanliness of contaminated surfaces.
Metal Preparation
In preparing metal components for return to the field, efficacy and safety are of top concern. Parts washers and hot tanks require customized solutions to meet your needs. Our chemical solutions include innovative blends of high-performance surfactants, alkalinity boosters, water conditioning agents, and corrosion inhibitors. We craft solutions to meet your unique challenges and can also assist with application and disposal.
Your Needs Are Diverse; So Are Our Solutions
With decades of industry expertise, we have dedicated ourselves to the pursuit of innovation, and paired with our commitment to service, we have made Guardian an industry leader.
Our knowledgeable team and valuable lab resources mean we can help reduce operational inefficiencies at every step; from reducing the time needed for regular cleanings to ensuring your storage and transportation equipment pass inspection. This has included the development of green chemical solution options that meet the highest EH&S standards.
Some of these solutions include:
- Gear cleaning programs that reduce days-long tasks to just hours
- Equipment cleaning options that are low odor, high flashpoint, low V.O.C., safe to ground, biodegradable, APE- and NPE-free
- Water-based, non-caustic specialty cleaning and degreasing chemicals for carbon and light oil-based cleaning
Operating in the Athabasca region? See our Fort McMurray oil sands chemical supplier page, and the BrightShield program for heat exchanger and vessel cleaning.
We don’t believe in ‘deliver-and-done’. True benefits revolve around the consistency of program execution, which is why we’re there when you need us both for regular servicing and emergency support for life.
Our experts know your industry and will seek to understand the unique challenges of your business. Let’s talk.
Your systems and processes are interconnected. We’ll arrange a site visit to understand the bigger picture.
Frequently Asked Questions About Chemical Solutions for Oilsands Mining
Heavy-duty cleaners and bitumen removers for mobile and fixed equipment, production enhancement chemistry through extraction and froth treatment, hydrogen sulphide scavenging and degassing, metal preparation for maintenance and rebuild, and sanitation chemistry for plant and camp facilities.
Bitumen bound with clay fines on equipment, and it behaves differently from any other hydrocarbon soil. It sets hard, adheres to painted and bare steel, and needs a dedicated bitumen remover with real dwell time. General degreasers move the surface and leave the bond intact.
Media fouling. Walnut shell media in an oil removal filter blinds with hydrocarbon and fines and stops backwashing clean, so differential pressure climbs and oil carryover increases. Chemistry that cleans the media without caustic lets it be recovered in place rather than replaced.
A combination of hydrocarbon, scale and solids depositing on the tube side, which reduces cooling capacity and drives cleaning frequency up. The mix varies by site, which is why the same cleaning chemistry performs differently at two operations doing apparently the same thing.
In many cases yes, and it returns the unit to service faster. Whether chemistry alone will do it depends on the deposit, which is why we run a foulant analysis before proposing a method. Our case work includes exchangers returned to service in under a day without lancing.
With a planned chemical degassing and decontamination sequence rather than ventilation and time. Chemistry converts sulphide and strips vapour, shortening the time to safe entry and reducing exposure during the work. On a turnaround, that time is the schedule.
We hold product approvals at all major oilsands sites. Where a product is not on a site list, we work directly with site EHS to have it assessed and added, and we have local representation with site access including approvals to bring vehicles on site.
Through our BrightShield process: an audit of the equipment and objectives beforehand, lab analysis of the actual deposit, bench screening of candidate chemistry against it, on-site support during application, and a validation report against the KPIs agreed at the start. Turnaround windows are too short to work chemistry out on the day.
Yes, including representatives local to the area and technical specialists who have spent their careers on oilsands sites. Regional presence matters here because site access, approvals and shutdown support all require being there rather than shipping product and hoping.
We believe it’s our job as your chemical partner to make new things possible.
