An integrated approach to on site/in situ upgrading Dr Pedro Pereira-Almao, Schulich School of Engineering, University of Calgary, Canada

摘要

Depleting conventional oils makes more evident the limitations that the use of diluents has for carrying extra heavy oils (EHO) and bitumen to processing facilities. An alternative to dilution is field upgrading which involves an increased level of operations at production sites. With the deployment in Canada of thermal in situ bitumen production technologies such as Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD), a different engineering approach to the conventional oil exploitation is resulting.SAGD allows the development of a confined liquid and gas chamber along the length of the production wells. This chamber could be used as a reactor for in situ upgrading processes or as a complement of field upgrading technologies, eventually resulting in environmentally-economically sound options.Additionally, temperature levels in the reservoir can be increased with existing new technologies, raising expectations of moderate/medium upgrading of bitumen and EHO. Efficient hybrid recovery processes can be quickly realized with a concerted effort of multidisciplinary R&D and demonstration teams.The Alberta Ingenuity Centre for In Situ Energy (AICISE) at the University of Calgary researches on a wide variety of novel hybrid processes to create effective in-reservoir processing elements in a close interaction with industry. The centre is creating a versatile array of bench scale or small pilot plants to test hybrid processes conceptions with continuous delivery of dispersible catalysts, adsorbents and reactants. They have the potential to upgrade petroleum in situ with reduced needs of energy introduction to the reservoir while selectively transforming contaminants into harmless products. EHO and bitumen require twice more hydrogen than light crude oils to achieve fuel products. This is a strong motivation to develop lower-cost hydrogen generation in the places where these resources are abundant. AICISE includes an effort on in situ/field hydrogen production from residual oil and fractions of the recovered in situ upgraded crude oil.