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The technology of the Value Creation Group addresses the fundamental problems inhibiting the growth of production from the oil sands – the high capital and operating costs associated with bitumen production, transportation and upgrading.
Utilization of the VCG technology through combination of the ADC™ and USP™ produces a synthetic crude oil that, although sour, has the difficult sulphur compounds removed, leaving only sulphur components that can be readily desulphurized by hydrotreaters or hydrocrackers already available in most existing conventional North American refineries. This avoids the costly capital outlay required for high-pressure hydroprocessing and hydrogen production necessary in conventional upgraders. A corollary is that, in eliminating hydroprocessing and hydrogen production together with their associated furnaces, the technology offers lower emissions over conventional upgrading.
The VCG technology and associated facilities are designed to be very energy-efficient. This is achieved by minimizing energy usage through the elimination of hydroprocessing and hydrogen production facilities and the application of moderate operating conditions of temperature and pressure in the ADC™ process, ambient pressure conditions in the USP™ process, and by maximizing energy efficiency through the integration of heat generated to pre-heat other process streams rather than emitting this heat into the atmosphere.
Prototype ADC™ and USP™ plants have been constructed and demonstrated at Technoeconomics' technology centre located in High River, Alberta, and at an industrial site in Calgary, Alberta, respectively.
The robustness and operability of the prototype plants have been tested with the running of different feedstocks and different operating conditions to ensure successful commercialization.
The VCG technology can be either applied in a stand-alone application, such as in the case of the BA Energy Heartland Upgrader, or integrated directly into upstream field facilities as proposed for development of VCI’s Terre de Grace Project oil sands leases. The technology has been developed as two proprietary steps: the Accelerated Decontamination (ADC™) process and the Ultra-Selective Pyrolysis (USP™) process, which can be used individually and in combination.
The ADC™ unit removes asphaltenic contaminants very selectively and as completely as desired, using colloidal physics, mild temperature and low pressure conditions. The USP™ unit cracks the heavy residue component into light oil products in an energy efficient manner. These two steps transform the bitumen into a refineable crude, enabling conventional refineries to finish the refining tasks with existing facilities, thus eliminating significant upgrading capital and operating costs.
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