“Looking for peace is like looking for a turtle with a mustache: You won't be able to find it. But when your heart is ready, peace will come looking for you.” -- Ajahn Chah quotes (Thai famous buddhist, 1918-1992)
With tar sands increasing in importance for the world’s energy supply, desulfurization and other technologies must be adapted to that type of source. A keyword for online research in the tar sands area is …
Toe to Heel Air Injection (THAI)
A Wikipedia article describes the technology thusly …
“Toe to Heel Air Injection (THAI)
“This is a very new and experimental method that combines a vertical air injection well with a horizontal production well. The process ignites oil in the reservoir and creates a vertical wall of fire moving from the "toe" of the horizontal well toward the "heel", which burns the heavier oil components and upgrades some of the heavy bitumen into lighter oil right in the formation. Historically fireflood projects have not worked out well because of difficulty in controlling the flame front and a propensity to set the producing wells on fire. However, some oil companies feel the THAI method will be more controllable and practical, and have the advantage of not requiring energy to create steam.
“Advocates of this method of extraction state that it uses less freshwater, produces 50% less greenhouse gases, and has a smaller footprint than other production techniques.
“Petrobank Energy and Resources Ltd. has reported encouraging results from their test wells in Alberta, with production rates of up to 400 barrels per day per well, and the oil upgraded from 8 to 12 API degrees. The company hopes to get a further 7-degree upgrade from its CAPRI (controlled atmospheric pressure resin infusion) system, which pulls the oil through a catalyst lining the lower pipe.”
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_sands#Toe_to_Heel_Air_Injection_.28THAI.29
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For more detail on the technology, take a look at …
Tech Talk: The THAI process for bitumen and heavy oil
Posted by Heading Out on February 7, 2010 - 9:14am
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: bitumen, heavy oil, tech talk, toe to heel air injection [list all tags]
“For a while, when I was a student, I had an attic bedroom that was heated by a small coal fire, with a relatively short chimney up to the roof. I learned, fairly early on, that in starting the fire you needed a fairly high velocity air flow across the coals, and underlying firewood strips. And to get this I would rest a shovel over the front of the fireplace, and try and seal off the sides. I kept a small bellows beside the fire to help when this wasn’t particularly successful. When you are starting a fire underground the provision of air is critical, but when you are trying to burn the residual coke that is left, after the heat has cracked the rest of the oil and caused it to flow away, keeping that air flowing at a high enough rate to sustain the high-temperature burn becomes somewhat critical to most efficient operation, particularly if the air has to get through a sand layer to reach the fire.
“This is the post on THAI – Toe to Heel Air Injection for the recovery of heavy oils, which is part of the ongoing technical post (tech talk) series that I write on Sundays. It is a subject that has been described several times in the past at The Oil Drum. I first mentioned it back in 2006 when the first underground test was underway at White Sands.”
source: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6183
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