Oil Sands & Thermal Heavy Oil Operations
Natural gas is a valued commodity that has excellent low greenhouse gas emission characteristics for residential and urban consumers and gas co-generation power stations. Public pressure is expected to increase to urge large industrial consumers to find alternative fuel sources. Lower gas supplies, increased gas demand and climbing gas prices are expected in the coming years and over the time horizon of the long term oil sands projects. MSAR provides these operations with a strategic fuel option.
MSAR emulsion fuel can be manufactured from heavy oil and any low value liquid residue generated in upgrading and refining processes such as vacuum tower, visbreaker, or solvent deasphalter bottoms. The key advantages of burning MSAR rather than directly attempting to burn the residue in costly and complicated boiler systems are ease of use, combustion equipment reliability, reduced parasitic steam demand, reduced pollution loads, reduced equipment size and increased safety in using a low temperature fuel, all of which translate to value effectiveness.
As an alternative to gasifying residues for hydrogen manufacture in upgrader applications for thermal oil operations, MSAR power generation in conventional generator sets and steam generation in package boilers combined with reliable natural gas steam methane reforming is an attractive and simple alternative.
For clients concerned about greenhouse gas emissions related to their thermal oil operations, Quadrise Canada has access to high and low pressure technology options that eliminate process CO2 emissions to the atmosphere. The low pressure option is a patented technology called MCST that enables the client to burn natural gas, residues and emulsified residues such as MSAR in an oxygen-rich environment and sequester the flue gases into a gas over bitumen reservoir or an enhanced oil recovery operation. Where clients wish to pursue a high pressure option of burning emulsion fuels, Quadrise Canada is working with Clean Energy Systems to develop its gas generator for this purpose.
Power and steam co-generation opportunities can be integrated into oil sands and thermal oil facilities with the use of Wartsila or equivalent engines that can achieve over 42 percent thermal to electrical efficiencies. MSAR has been successfully tested in this application.
The concept of a water: bitumen emulsion as a transportation alternative versus adding expensive hydrocarbon diluents to bitumen for shipping has been practiced for over 20 years and is demonstrated in piping bitumen at distances over 300 kilometers. Quadrise is funding additional testing at Saskatchewan Research Council’s pipeline testing facility and continues to advance this solution.