Reactor Design for Partial Upgrading of Bitumen via Aquaprocessing
Date
2018-12-27
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Abstract
Alberta oil industry is facing a major challenge because of the widening price differentials between West Texas Intermediate and Western Canadian Select. The Western Canadian Select is trading at low of US$ 16.71 /bbl. because of its high viscosity, density, total acid number, and sulfur content and lack of access to market outside North America. Under these circumstances, partial upgrading processes such as Aquaprocessing are envisioned as a potential solution. The synthetic crude oil produced from Aquaprocessing of bitumen requires 50 vol.% less diluents than the Athabasca bitumen to meet the pipeline specifications. This thesis is focused on evaluating the reactor design parameters required for scale-up of this technology. The kinetic parameters for hydrocracking reaction were calculated using first-order rate law expression for the packed bed reactor. Diffusivity of steam in bitumen, dimensionless numbers and hydrodynamic properties of the fluid inside the reactor were calculated using experimental and simulated data. The experimental results indicate that the effect of catalyst particle size depends on the catalyst preparation techniques. The steam diffusivity in bitumen was found to increase linearly with increase in reaction temperature. 0.05 psi/m pressure drop and 39 vol.% liquid holdups are predicted for the two-phase flow regime.
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Reactor Design, Fixed Bed Reactor, Aquaprocessing, Reaction Kinetics, Heavy Oil Upgrading, Catalytic Upgrading of Bitumen, Mass Transfer in Porous Catalyst
Citation
Gill, S. S. (2018). Reactor Design for Partial Upgrading of Bitumen via Aquaprocessing (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.