SUPERCRITICAL WATER TREATMENT AND THERMAL CRACKING PROSECCES FOR ATHABASCA BITUMEN: RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CONVERSION AND YIELDS

摘要

There are several thermal processes without catalyst and hydrogen to upgrade Athabasca bitumen: Visbreaking, Delayed coking, and Fluid coking are conventional ones, and HSC, HTL, FQ, and Eureka are evaluating their possibility. In addition, supercritical water (SCW) treatment is under development. Because we clarified that SCW was inert medium and did not show any chemical effect on the upgrading reaction of bitumen, the SCW upgrading was one of the thermal cracking processes. Here, we compared several thermal cracking processes including SCW upgrading using the relationship between conversion and yields to compare the thermal upgrading behavior of Athabasca bitumen based on reported information.