Development of chemical additives to improve the efficiency of solvent-aided thermal bitumen recovery processes

Alberta’s oil sands are one of the world’s largest known hydrocarbon deposits. Current commercial recovery methods such as Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) require large amounts of steam. This in turn means that large amounts of natural gas are burned to produce steam resulting in significant greenhouse gas emissions. Solvent injection is one initiative that is gaining interest to overcome the aforementioned limitations.
Certain reservoir conditions, including heterogeneous geology and the presence of undesirable reservoir fluids (which may include excess water and natural gas), lead to inefficient and uneconomic recovery of bitumen using the current commercial recovery methods. This project will concentrate on the development of additives to these traditional processes that will improve the efficiency of hydrocarbon recovery by minimizing the effects of the undesirable geology, water and natural gas. Additives will be designed and simulated in the laboratory. TO BE CONT’D

Faculty Supervisor:

Hassan Hassanzadeh

Student:

Partner:

Cenovus Energy Inc;University of Calgary

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Mining; Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

University of Calgary

Program: