Contact:
W. (Bill) Eadie,P.Eng.
President
780-906-0577
bill@eadieoil.com
EADIEMAC
Heavy oil/bitumen partial upgrading plants The Development Process A Power Point Presentation
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.
Recent activity
A proposal was submitted to the Emissions Reduction Alberta (ERA) Shovel Ready Challenge to build, operate and test a 2000 bbl/day demonstration plant in Alberta.
Current patent enhancements
Advanced process patents are aimed to significantly reduce costs and the environmental impacts of existing heavy oil/bitumen shipping systems. Simply reducing the demand for diluent cuts the carbon intensity since less diluent is moved back and forth at production sites.
Plant development
Canadian centric supply chains are being established focussed on the Canadian based construction sector and First Nations groups.