Canada’s oil sands industry produced 1.9 million barrels of bitumen per day in 2012, and it is expected to be doubled by 2022 to satisfy the continuous energy demand. The most effective extraction process of bitumen is steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD), which is considered as one of the most commonly enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods. However, to match the massive production scale of bitumen, huge amounts of wastewater are generated during SAGD process. This wastewater contains a wide range of anion and cation metals, inorganic dispersed particles, clays, sands, and various corrosion products, and organic compounds such as BTEX, PAHs and phenyls. In this work, we propose an integrated process pertaining to water recyclability and hydrocarbons waste recovery. Hence, we first look into optimizing the oxy-cracking conditions for separating the organics from clay and sand present in a real sample of SAGD produced water. After that, the solubilized hydrocarbons will be selectively adsorbed onto silica-supported bimetallic nanoparticles in a packed bed column, and subsequently, the adsorbed hydrocarbons will be gasified into synthetic gas product. The in-house prepared silica-supported bimetallic nanoparticles showed high adsorption affinity and catalytic activity towards the solubilized hydrocarbons. Results will be discussed and elaborated.
 

Conference Title

65th Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference (CSChE)

Conference Country

Canada

Conference Date

Oct. 4, 2015 - Oct. 7, 2015

Conference Sponsor

CSChE

Additional Info

Conference Website