Heavy Oil Extraction
As sources of crude oil become less available, there is a greater need to develop known but less easily handled petroleum resources. One such resources is tar sand, a sandy material having both water and tar within its interstices. Large deposits are found in various parts of the world. For example, one of the largest known deposits of tar sands lies in the Athabasca district of Alberta Canada, and extends for many thousands of square miles.
These sands contain tremendous reserves of hydrocarbon constituents. For example, the oil in the sands may vary from about 5 to 21% by volume, generally in the range of about 12% by volume. The gravity of the oil ranges from about 6° to 10° API, generally about 8° API. The tar sand beds may range from about 100 to 400 feet thick, covered by an overburden from about 200 to 300 feet. A typical oil recovered from the sands has an initial boiling point of about 300° F., 1.0% distillation to 430° F., 20% distillation to 650° F., and 50.0% distillation to 980° F. Tar sands represent a significant petroleum resource which may ease the growing shortage of sources available to satisfy our petroleum demand. However, before the petroleum material in the tar sand can be employed in ordinary oil refining operation, it must be separated from the solid, sandy material.
Thus, tar sands suffer the disadvantage of requiring additional processing steps over conventional forms of oil recovery. The high cost of separating tar from sand has been the greatest restriction on the use of tar sand as an economical source of crude petroleum. It is, therefor, essential to the commercial feasibility of any process for the recovery of hydrocarbons from tar sands that its costs be low while maintaining a high recovery of hydrocarbons.
The peculiar nature of the tar sand aggregate has heretofore frustrated attempts to attain these goals, though, some are relatively soft and free-flowing while others are very hard and rock like. For example, the tar sands of the Athabasca district are composed of an almost pure silica sand, each grain of which is surrounded by a layer of water which, in turn, is surrounded by a film of oil. The oil film may also contain significant quantities of clay. The interstices between the grains are largely filled with oil. This construction of the aggregate is believed to exist because the water content of the tar sands has a greater surface tension than the oil. Although, it is recognized that the exact compositions of the tar sands vary, even in an immediate location, the foregoing construction of the tar sand aggregate is apparently a general characteristic of the sands.
Various methods have been prepared for the recovery of hydrocarbons from tar sands, including direct fluid coking and retorting. These thermal processes are environmentally very damaging and highly uneconomical due to the fact that the heat imparted to the sand cannot be effectively and efficiently recovered therefrom.
At this time, only method that is being commercially practiced is a thermal water based method (Clark's Method) and its many variations utilizing caustic soda and producing vast quantities of waste water in ther form of tailings ponds. Great achievements have reduced water utilization from four barrels per oil barrel produced to approximately one and a half but that number still represents over a million barrels of waste water produced on a daily basis let alone the carbon content of heating that utilized water to scalding temperatures.
Quantum Ingenuity's Heavy Oil Extraction Technology
Quantum Ingenuity discovered a novel mechanism for releasing water-wet or hydrocarbon-wet bitumen from oil sands without utilizing any water or heat. Resulting end product is far superior to what is being produced from existing oil sands operations while causing no tailing ponds and very minimal environmental footprint.
Our system while passing multiple third-party validations is extremely ideal to operate in environments where water and energy is difficult to come-by such as mid-western United States, regions of Canada far away from Athabasca river basin, frozen steppes of Russia and Venezuelan Orinico Belt.
Our further development and demonstration scale production system involves building a 50-barrel per day production system followed by a 5,000 barrel unit.