By flashing heavy oil with steam, operators don't need diluent to transport heavy oil. The process also has certain synergies with steam recovery methods.

Today's petroleum industry is facing new challenges regarding supply and demand. Oil consumption is some 75 million b/d, but it is predicted to surpass 100 million b/d during the next 10 to 20 years as worldwide industrialization increases and emerging markets grow. Some 25% of the total oil demand is expected to come from heavy oil. Heavy oil is not only more costly to produce, it is more difficult to transport to the refinery and, once there, more difficult to refine.
Colorado-based Synergy Technologies Corp., through its 50% owned subsidiary Carbon Resources Ltd., has developed a new and promising technology called the CPJ process to help meet these challenges. The CPJ process is a heavy oil upgrading method that can economically convert bitumen and heavy oil reserves to lighter, more valuable and more easily refineable synthetic crude oil (SCO).
Developed in France and named after its inventor, Dr. C. Pierre Jorgensen, this method can be applied to field upgrading of bitumen and heavy oils, as well as refinery atmospheric tower and vacuum tower bottoms. A French patent has been granted, and US and other international patents are pending.
The CPJ process has been run on refinery fractions and Alberta bitumen and heavy oils as low as 7.5° API. It has produced synthetic crude oil at greater than 30° API. With liquid volume yields exceeding 90%, the CPJ process uses no hydrogen and no catalyst. It has the additional advantage of letting the operator adjust process conditions to optimize the middle distillate fractions relative to the vacuum gas oils in the SCO to suit the refiner. Alternatively, the CPJ process can displace diluent required for pipeline transport of heavy oil.
Heavy oil
Crude oils are called bitumen in the 5° to 10° API range and heavy oil in the 10° to 20° API range. Refinery atmospheric tower bottoms and vacuum tower bottoms also fall into these categories. These petroleum streams all have one thing in common: huge molecules with molecular weights in excess of 2,000. In order to convert these streams to lighter, more desirable petroleum fractions, the huge molecules must be broken. The manner in which this is done dictates not only the yields but also the coke and gas make. Conventional processes usually result in low yields of around 70 LV% and high coke and gas make.
Huge reserves of bitumen and heavy oil lie in deposits around the world. However, their high viscosity and pour point makes them difficult and expensive to produce. In addition, they have inordinately high asphaltene and residuum contents, which make them less desirable refinery feed stocks. Therefore, in order to maximize the use of this abundant resource, the bitumen and heavy oil must be upgraded near its source into a lighter, more desirable SCO. Upgrading facilities ranging in capacity from 5,000 b/d to 25,000 b/d appear to fit the requirements of most producers.
CPJ process
The underlying principle of the CPJ process is application of an instantaneous thermal shock to the heavy oil molecule using superheated steam (Figure 1). This instantaneous transfer of energy into the heavy oil is designed to break the weakest bond of these large molecules, causing the molecule to almost split in half and minimizing the formation of off gas and soot. The heavy oil feedstock is preheated to near its thermal cracking point and contacted with superheated steam in a proprietary injector, where most of the reaction takes place. Contact time is a matter of seconds. High API gravity oils may undergo a preflash in order to bypass the existing middle distillates around the CPJ reactor. The bypassed fraction will be recombined with the SCO downstream of the CPJ process.
The advantages include:
• no catalyst or hydrogen is required;
• no external fuel is normally required, as byproducts are used as fuel;
• moderate pressures of 435 psi to 580 psi;
• little off gas;
• high synthetic crude yields of more than 90 LV%; and
• can provide fuel for bitumen production requirements.
Field upgrading
The CPJ process offers much to the producer considering a field upgrader. Unless it is upgraded, heavy oil must be blended with light oil such as condensate to bring the aggregate specific gravity (°API) up to meet pipeline specifications before it can be shipped. The CPJ process can produce the required diluent oil from the heavy oil feedstock while using the heavier pitch byproduct as fuel for the production effort, displacing natural gas. Alternatively, CPJ can produce an SCO for transport down the pipeline to be marketed as a light sour crude with only a small discount to the WTI price while again using the pitch for fuel. Furthermore, an SCO containing the pitch can be produced that meets the viscosity and gravity specifications for transport to market via the pipeline.
The largest market potential for the CPJ process appears to be in displacing high-priced diluent for blending purposes. Usually heavy oil requires diluent in a 25% to 40% proportion to meet the pipeline specification. For example, a specific pipeline might have an API gravity specification of at least 21.5°. Diluent in Alberta is sold at a premium over WTI. In the Fort McMurray area in Alberta, diluent for blending with heavy oil and natural gas for fuel is in especially short supply. Normally, the CPJ process would be tasked to produce a 28° to 32° API SCO. However, to displace condensate as diluent, the CPJ process will be operated to produce a 36° to 40° API product. This is just a matter of increasing the recycle rate of the vacuum gas-oil fraction of the SCO. Overall capital and operating expenses are marginally impacted by this modification. Therefore, CPJ plants to provide diluent as well as fuel for production appear to be very attractive.
The question most often asked about upgraded oil is its stability. One test on an SCO compared viscosity; asphaltene content as determined by pentane insoluble amount; and the Shell Hot Filtration results for day 1, day 7, day 15 and day 30. The results show the SCO is virtually unchanged over the 30-day period and th erefore stable (Figure 2). In addition, SCO test results as determined by the National Centre for Upgrading Technology were provided to the pipeline personnel of Enbridge Inc., who have advised that they see no problem in transporting such material down their pipelines. The capital and operating expenses of the CPJ process are low enough to justify its use even for relatively low production rates. Furthermore, the process can be easily scaled to suit the application. Field units in the 3,000-b/d to 5,000-b/d capacity range should be attractive as well as units in the 20,000-b/d range.
As CPJ is steam-driven, it integrates well with typical bitumen production processes such as steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD). The recycle streams of the CPJ process are easily adjusted to not only produce the desired SCO but also to produce the internal fuel demand of the overall production and upgrading facility.
Economics
Capital costs for a nominal 20,000-b/d (feed) CPJ facility have been estimated in the US $5,000 range. Costs are for a greenfield site, including sulfur removal from the produced gas and process water treating. The pitch is nominally more than enough to supply the fuel requirement for the CPJ process and, coupled with the off gas, can be a source of export fuel to a SAGD or other heavy oil production technique. In order to use the pitch as fuel for Albertan heavy oil projects, sulfur must be removed from the combustion products to meet emission specifications. Such sulfur removal raises the capital and operating costs substantially. Operating costs, which include labor, maintenance and power ($0.05/kwh), are in the $1.24/bbl range without sulfur removal and $2.01/bbl with sulfur removal by flue gas desulfurization. These costs are based upon a fuel credit of $2/MMBtu. With natural gas prices forecast to remain well above $4/MMBtu for the foreseeable future, export of the pitch to provide fuel for the heavy oil production activity appears attractive.