Background
Heavy oil/bitumen is too viscous to be transported by pipeline as produced in the field. This thick crude requires around 30% of a very light hydrocarbon fluid, "diluent", blended in to drastically reduce the viscosity to meet pipeline specifications. Our development approach, currently at TRL 7 with elements at TRL 9, is to thermally crack at high temperatures, called visbreaking, certain hydrocarbon molecules. This reduces the viscosity and the demand for expensive diluent. The plant design has a specific limited objective to reduce diluent blending. Capital and operating costs are thus minimized. The focus of this developent has always been to engineer a plant that reduces producer overheads by facilitating the shipping of oil products to market with less diluent. Target markets are major heavy oil producers in Canada, Venezuela and other locations worldwide.
