Is there anyone that can explain to me the whole idea for Oil sand process? It is better if you can provide diagram or point out to a website or link. Thanks.
Oil sands are reserves of bitumen, very heavy crude oil. You can't process it by sinking a well like with a traditional reservoir. Instead, you have to mine it, and the big upgraders in Fort McMurray, Alberta like Suncor do this on an enormous scale.
The other methods involve heating it up to get it to flow. An old method was pumping steam down into a reservoir to heat it enough to get it to flow. Then pumping the heated bitumen until it stopped and repeating, often called huff and puff. A newer technology called Steam Assisted Gravity Drain (SAGD) involves drilling two wells into a reservoir. One injects steam while the other collects condensate and heated bitumen. Then gas lift or some other method is employed to bring the liquids to the surface.
The crude oil itself is very heavy and usually very sour and requires further processing to get it to meet pipeline spec. Bitumen is sent to a specialized refinery, typically referred to as an upgrader, for further processing. The upgraders operate vacuum units, cokers, hydrotreaters, sulfur plants, etc. just like a traditional refiner; however, typically their products are what is usually known as "synthetic crude". The properties of the crude obviously depend on the process, but many of them are low sulfur, high gravity blends. Like a WTI equivalent. The synthetic crude is then sold on the market to traditional refineries.
Obviously a very energy intensive process. When the price of crude was low upgraders were shutting down, but now development in Alberta is booming. You could probably turn up some more detailed info by punching some of the terms above into Google.
Very informative people I'm working in Oil Sands now and i want to know the process behind it. It's my first time to work in this field and would really like to know everything specially the processes
I'm working in Oil Sands now and i want to know the process behind it. It's my first time to work in this field and would really like to know everything specially the processes 