Oilsands Review - September 2006

R&D 95

MSAR’s lower viscosity also makes it a potential bitumen transport alternative to diluent. MSAR emulsions are about midway through a five-stage series of tests at the Saskatchewan Research Council’s Pipe Flow Technology Centre in Saskatoon— one of two such facilities on the continent. Besides lab work, the centre does commercial-scale testing using wide-diameter pipe.

“About three-quarters of our work these days is for oilsands clients,” says the centre’s manager, Doug Soveran.

Like most alternatives to natural gas, however, bitumen-based emulsion fuels have their dark side: emissions that include particulates, sulphur compounds, and nitrous oxides. These, says Wearing, can be brought under control. Noting that there are many existing flue gas treatments, some of which have been around for a long time, he says producers will have to factor in the cost of “ scrubbing SO₂, NO_x, and particulates. There is an economy of scale—which scales up really well. But there is a capital cost for flue gas treatment.”

“We have developed a combustion technology to burn MSAR in a denitrified environment that reduces the NOx of flue gas,” says Lennox. It’s called MCAST, which stands for MSAR combustion and sequestration technology. The flue product from burning MSAR in a denitrified environment, says Lennox, is a high-purity stream of SO₂(about 5 per cent), CO₂( 90 per cent), and other gases ( 5 per cent). The stream—minus the lighter, mobile gaseous nitrogen component—is relatively heavy, water soluble, and easily sequestered. Without the MCAST process, nitrogen compounds typically account for 79 per cent of the flue gas, says Lennox.

He says that for smaller SAGD facilities, this cost could perhaps prove uneconomic. Quadrise has been working on a green solution to its MSAR technology, however.