Improving the Energy Efficiency of Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage with Steam Additives
06th December 2018, Thursday, 12:00‐01:00 pm, ChE Seminar hall
ABSTRACT
The inherently high viscosity of bitumen at reservoir conditions makes exploitation of Canadian oil sands deposits very challenging. Although the development of steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) process has enabled commercial production of bitumen from deeply buried oil sands, the technology remains very energy intensive and only marginally profitable. The depressed oil price during last few years has increased the urgency for examining ways of making this technology more energy efficient and more cost effective. This presentation will discuss ways of improving the SAGD process to make it more energy efficient and reduce its environmental footprint. Among various option available for such improvement, the talk will focus on the use of steam additives to reduce the amount of steam injected per barrel of produced oil. It will provide an overview of the research program that has been launched at University of Calgary to evaluate different classes of steam additives, including hydrocarbon solvents, surfactants and non-condensable gases.
SHORT BIO:
Brij Maini is a Professor and NSERC/Nexen & CNOOC Industrial Research Chair in Advanced In-situ Recovery Processes for Oil Sands in the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at Schulich School of Engineering, University of Calgary. Prior to joining University of Calgary faculty, he was Group Leader for Heavy Oil Research at the Petroleum Recovery Institute. He is a specialist in heavy oil reservoir engineering with research interests in improved heavy oil recovery methods and multiphase flow in porous media. He holds a B.Tech. degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from University of Washington, Seattle. He is a registered professional engineer in Alberta and is a life member of Society of Petroleum Engineers.