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Heavy Oil/Bitumen Partial Upgrading

EADIEMAC Process Plant Modular Skid Mounted Unit
  • Our process team initiated a research project at the Alberta Research Council, now Alberta Innovates, with the objective of developing a way to reduce the requirement for diluent at heavy oil/bitumen well sites.
  • A 1.5 bbl/day pilot plant was designed, built and tested at the Alberta Research Council's facilities in Nisku and Devon to establish the parameters for a field partial upgrader utilizing a visbreaking process.
  • Subsequently, thermally cracked oil was processed in a 200 bbl/day #2 diesel plant.
  • Current activites involve the construction and testing of a 2000 bbl/day demonstration plant.
  • This will lead to 10,000 bbl/day modular commercial units.
  • Background
  • Armed with the basic research, engineering designs evolved over several years to fine tune a practical and economical plant.
  • These designs were then put into a complete set of drawings suitable for fabrication.
  • A local Alberta fabricator was able to provide a fixed cost to fabricate the plant within the skid limits.
  • With this information we were able to establish that it was economical to build and operate a field unit of 1200 - 2000 bbls/day.
  • The design is scalable to suit larger volumes of 10,000 bbls/day or more at central locations.
  • Meanwhile, our development activities continue with advanced patents to enhance the basic system to extract resid and to generate higher value products.
  • Since the resid will be available on site and at high temperature there is the option of converting it into electrical power for local use or export to the grid utilizing, most likely, fluidized bed boilers or possibly gasification. These are well established processes.
  • The EADIEMAC process is one of a few advanced partial upgrading systems available to Canada in the event industry decides to utilize the opportunity or governments decide it is of strategic value in Canada's energy future.