Upgraders
Heavy crude feedstock needs pre‐processing before it is fit for conventional refineries. This is called 'upgrading,' the key components of which include 1) removal of water, sand, physical waste and lighter products; 2) catalytic purification (hydrodemetallization, hydrodesulfurization and hydrodenitrogenation; and 3) hydrogenation though carbon rejection or catalytic hydrocracking. Since carbon rejection is generally inefficient and wasteful, catalytic hydrocracking is preferred in most cases.
Catalytic purification and hydrocracking are together known as hydroprocessing. The big challenge in hydroprocessing is to deal with the impurities found in heavy crude, as they poison the catalysts over time. Many efforts have been made to deal with this to ensure high activity and long life of a catalyst. Catalyst materials and pore size distributions need to be optimized to deal with these challenges.
Figuratively speaking, technological improvements and new infrastructure cause heavy oil reservoirs to grow. Enhanced recovery techniques are urging a higher percentage of the reservoirs' oil to the surface. Research and development are creating technologies which have increased the amount producers can extract. Small improvements in technology applied to such a huge resource could mean enormous additions to Canada's recoverable crude oil reserves.
Few Canadian refineries can process more than small amounts of heavy oil, so production has traditionally gone to United States asphalt plants. This changed in the 1980s, however, with the announcement that construction would begin on two heavy oil upgraders. Like the plants at Syncrude, Suncor and Shell's Scotford facility near Edmonton, these refinery-like operations turn heavy oil and bitumen into lighter and lower-sulfur, more desirable crude.
In the late 1970s, a group of heavy oil producers (Gulf, Husky, Shell, PetroCanada and SaskOil) proposed the Plains Upgrader. This facility would have cost $1.2 billion and upgraded 50,000 barrels (7,900 m3) of oil per day. Gradually, however, consortium members pulled out of the project as they concluded that the high cost of upgrading would make the project uneconomic. In the end, only PetroCanada and Saskoil - both Crown corporations - remained.
The private sector partners pulled out of the Plains Upgrader because upgrading heavy oil at that time was a risky financial proposition. To be economic, these projects rely on substantial differences in pricing ("differentials") between light and heavy crude oil. Heavy oil is worth less than light oil; the question is, How much less? Unless upgraded oil fetched considerably more per barrel than the less attractive heavy oil, the upgrader would not make money on processing the stuff.
While the Plains partnership collapsed, the idea survived.
Read more about this topic: History Of The Petroleum Industry In Canada (oil Sands And Heavy Oil)