IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/appene/v107y2013icp281-296.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Practical process design for in situ gasification of bitumen

Author

Listed:
  • Kapadia, Punitkumar R.
  • Wang, Jingyi (Jacky)
  • Kallos, Michael S.
  • Gates, Ian D.

Abstract

The province of Alberta, Canada hosts an estimated 170 billion barrels of crude bitumen reserves in the Athabasca, Cold Lake and Peace River deposits. These reserves are commercially recovered through surface mining or in situ recovery methods. Most of the produced bitumen is converted in surface upgraders to synthetic crude oil (SCO), a 31–33°API oil product. Next, SCO is converted to transportation fuels, lubricants and petrochemicals in conventional refineries and petrochemical industries. In situ recovery or mining as well as bitumen upgrading and refining are energy intensive processes that generate huge volumes of acid gas, consume massive volumes of water, and are costly. Bitumen upgrading requires hydrogen, and currently most of it is produced by steam reforming of methane. Alternatively, hydrogen can be generated by in situ gasification of bitumen. In situ gasification of oil sands is potentially more energy efficient with reduced emission to atmosphere since acid gases are sequestered to some extent in the reservoir. Also, water usage is lowered and heavy metals and sulfur compounds in the bitumen tend to remain downhole since the main product is gas. The objective of this research was to understand and optimize hydrogen generation by in situ gasification from bitumen reservoirs. The central idea was to recover energy from the reservoir in the form of hydrogen and bitumen. In situ combustion has been attempted in the field, in a pilot run at Marguerite Lake. In this pilot, the produced gas contained up to 20mole percent of hydrogen. In the current study, the Marguerite Lake Phase A main-pattern in situ combustion pilot was history-matched as a basis to understand a field-operated recovery process where in situ gasification reactions occur. Based on Marguerite Lake in situ combustion pilot observations, a new in situ bitumen gasification process, based on a Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) well configuration, was designed and compared with conventional SAGD on the basis of energy investment, emission to atmosphere and water usage. The results show that the amount of energy produced per unit of energy invested for the in situ gasification process was greater than the steam alone recovery process with less than half the water usage. The cyclic injection of steam and oxygen as compared to steam injection alone can permit design of oil-alone to oil+syngas production processes.

Suggested Citation

  • Kapadia, Punitkumar R. & Wang, Jingyi (Jacky) & Kallos, Michael S. & Gates, Ian D., 2013. "Practical process design for in situ gasification of bitumen," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 281-296.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:appene:v:107:y:2013:i:c:p:281-296
    DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2013.02.035
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261913001438
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.apenergy.2013.02.035?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mhatre, Purva & Gedam, Vidyadhar V. & Unnikrishnan, Seema, 2021. "Material circularity potential for construction materials – The case of transportation infrastructure in India," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    2. Alade, Olalekan S. & Mahmoud, Mohamed & Al Shehri, Dhafer & Mokheimer, Esmail M.A. & Sasaki, Kyuro & Ohashi, Ryo & Kamal, Muhammad Shahzad & Muhammad, Isah & Al-Nakhli, Ayman, 2022. "Experimental and numerical studies on production scheme to improve energy efficiency of bitumen production through insitu oil-in-water (O/W) emulsion," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 244(PA).
    3. Zhao, Renbao & Yu, Shuai & Yang, Jie & Heng, Minghao & Zhang, Chunhui & Wu, Yahong & Zhang, Jianhua & Yue, Xiang-an, 2018. "Optimization of well spacing to achieve a stable combustion during the THAI process," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 467-477.
    4. Yiming Rui & Bin Zhu & Qingsong Tang & Changcheng Yang & Dan Wang & Wanfen Pu & Xiaodong Tang, 2022. "Experimental Study of the Feasibility of In-Situ Hydrogen Generation from Gas Reservoir," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(21), pages 1-12, November.
    5. Hongtao Liu & Feng Chen & Yuanyuan Wang & Gang Liu & Hong Yao & Shuqin Liu, 2018. "Experimental Study of Reverse Underground Coal Gasification," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(11), pages 1-13, October.
    6. Zhang, Qian & Li, Qingfeng & Zhang, Linxian & Wang, Zhiqing & Jing, Xuliang & Yu, Zhongliang & Song, Shuangshuang & Fang, Yitian, 2014. "Preliminary study on co-gasification behavior of deoiled asphalt with coal and biomass," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 426-434.
    7. Pavel Afanasev & Evgeny Popov & Alexey Cheremisin & Roman Berenblyum & Evgeny Mikitin & Eduard Sorokin & Alexey Borisenko & Viktor Darishchev & Konstantin Shchekoldin & Olga Slavkina, 2021. "An Experimental Study of the Possibility of In Situ Hydrogen Generation within Gas Reservoirs," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(16), pages 1-21, August.
    8. Li, Pengliang & Liu, Zhenyi & Li, Mingzhi & Zhao, Yao & Li, Xuan & Sun, Ruiyan, 2018. "Experimental study on the ignition time of electric heaters with thermal insulation structure," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 855-862.
    9. Lazzaroni, Edoardo Filippo & Elsholkami, Mohamed & Arbiv, Itai & Martelli, Emanuele & Elkamel, Ali & Fowler, Michael, 2016. "Energy infrastructure modeling for the oil sands industry: Current situation," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 435-445.
    10. Nimana, Balwinder & Canter, Christina & Kumar, Amit, 2015. "Energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in the recovery and extraction of crude bitumen from Canada’s oil sands," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 189-199.
    11. Juan D. Antolinez & Rahman Miri & Alireza Nouri, 2023. "In Situ Combustion: A Comprehensive Review of the Current State of Knowledge," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(17), pages 1-27, August.
    12. Sapkota, Krishna & Oni, Abayomi Olufemi & Kumar, Amit & Linwei, Ma, 2018. "The development of a techno-economic model for the extraction, transportation, upgrading, and shipping of Canadian oil sands products to the Asia-Pacific region," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 223(C), pages 273-292.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:appene:v:107:y:2013:i:c:p:281-296. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.