Bitumen upgrading

For simplicity reasons, a liquid yield factor of one is assumed for bitumen upgrading operations. 

Numata, M., et a1. (2006), Application of Nuclear Energy to Bitumen Upgrading and Biomass Conversion , Proceedings ofICONE14 International Conference on Nuclear Engineering, Miami, FL, USA, July, ICONE14-89749. 

Current recovery operations of bitumen in tar sand formations involve use of a mining technique. This is followed by bitumen upgrading and refining to produce a synthetic crude oil. 

The current oil sands bitumen upgrading processes for the production of synthetic crude oil (Table 4) begin with diluted bitumen being processed through the diluent recovery units. The diluent recovery units are atmospheric distillation units that serve three purposes 1) distill off diluent naphtha and return it to the froth treatment process 2) distill off light gas oil and send it directly to a light gas oil hydrotreater and 3) produce hot atmospheric topped bitumen as feedstock for vacuum distillation unit and downstream bitumen conversion processes. 

A new synergistic process for bitumen upgrading is presented. There remain many possibilities of new, innovative, synergistic processes, which combine chemical and nuclear systems for efficient, clean and economical production of energy carriers. 

FIGURE 15.15 Heat balance of bitumen upgrading for thermocatalytic cracking (TCC) and PetroBeam process. 

Asphaltene concentrations can be as high as 18% in certain Athabasca bitumens. Athabasca bitumen is one of the largest reserves of bitumen in the world [4]. The aggregation and coking propensity of asphaltenes causes fouling in bitumen upgrading processes [3,4]. 

In 1995, N.S. Srinivasan used pyrolysis GC-MS to identify compounds present in Athabasca bitumen capable of creating anisotropic toluene-insoluble (TI) solids, known for fouling bitumen upgrading units. In the study, Srinivasan compared TI with a commercial hydrocracking unit and TI formed in a laboratory using atmospheric tower bottoms of hydrocracked bitumen as feed. Both types of TI were exposed to excess toluene at ambient temperature to remove all toluene-soluble components. TI samples were then exposed to the pyrolytic temperatures of 460 and 750°C. With a temperature... 

NCS are a major concern in bitumen upgrading processes. NCS are responsible for poisoning catalysts, promoting precipitate formation in product, and the emission of NOx into the environment [5,6]. As with asphaltenes, the complex nature of bitumen serves to... 

Rahimi, P.M. Dettman, H.D. Dawson, W.H. Nowlan, V. Del Bianco, A. Chomet, E. Coke fonnation from asphaltenes - solvent and concentration effects, CONRAD workshop on bitumen upgrading chemistry, June 7-8,1995, Calgary, Alberta. 

Hedrick, B.W., Seibert, K.D., Crewe, C. 2006. A New Approach to Heavy Oil and Bitumen Upgrading, HOP LLC, Meta Petrolenm, Bogota, Colombia. 

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