Abstract

Preliminary testing has shown that Western Research Institute's (WRI) Tank Bottom Recovery and Remediation (TaBoRR{reg_sign}) technology shows promise for heavy oil upgrading. Approximately 70 to 75 wt% of a Canadian Cold Lake bitumen feed was converted to a partially upgraded overhead product that could be transported directly by pipeline or blended with the parent bitumen to produce transportable crude. TaBoRR{reg_sign} was originally developed to remediate tank bottom wastes by producing a distillate product and solid waste. TaBoRR{reg_sign}'s processing steps include breaking a water-oil emulsion, recovering a light hydrocarbon fraction by distillation in a stripper unit, and pyrolyzing the residua reducing it to additional overhead and a benign coke for disposal. Cold Lake bitumen was tested in WRI's bench-scale equipment to evaluate the potential use of TaBoRR{reg_sign} technology for heavy oil upgrading to produce a stable, partially (or fully) upgraded product that will allow diluent-reduced or diluent-free transportation of bitumen or ultra-heavy crudes to market. Runs were conducted at temperatures of low, intermediate and high severity in the stripper to produce stripper overhead and bottoms. The bottoms from each of these runs were processed further in a 6-inch screw pyrolyzer to produce pyrolyzer overhead for blending with the corresponding stripper overheads.more » Proceeding in this fashion yielded three partially upgraded crudes. The products from TaBoRR{reg_sign} processing, the parent bitumen, and bitumen blends were subjected to stability and compatibility testing at the National Centre for Upgrading Technology (NCUT). Chemical analyses of the overhead product blends have met pipeline specifications for viscosity and density; however the bromine number does not, which might indicate the need for mild hydrotreating. Storage stability tests showed the blends to be stable. The blends were also soluble and compatible with most other Alberta crudes.« le Document type: Report