• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.260-269
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• 2020

The Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) process is an enhanced method to extract oil from bitumen which involves surface and central process facilities. This paper describes the Central Process Facilities (CPF) of SAGD and proposes several retrofit plans to the Heat Exchanger Network (HEN). In this approach, the process integration scheme is applied to estimate the energy saving in HENs, and various cases are modeled in favor of a commercial simulator. Throughout this work, a minimum approach temperature of 10℃ is assumed. The results reveal that, due to the HEN optimization using process integration, the heating and cooling duties can be reduced to 29.68MW and 1.886MW, respectively. Compared with the Husky case, all cases considered in this study indicate a potential reduction of at least 6% in total cost, including investment and operation costs.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.51 no.2
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• pp.178-185
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• 2007

Intermediate pentasil borosilicate zeolite-like materials have been crystallized by a novel method named steam-assisted conversion, which involves vapor-phase transport of water. Indeed, amorphous powders obtained by drying Na2O.SiO2.B2O3.TBA2O gels of various compositions using different boron sources are transformed into crystalline borosilicate zeolite belonging to pentasil family structure by contact with vapors of water under hydrothermal conditions. Using a variant of this method, a new material which has an intermediate structure of MFI/MEL in the ratio 90:10 was crystallized. The results show that steam and sufficiently high pH in the reacting hydrous solid are necessary for the crystallization to proceed. Characterization of the products shows some specific structural aspects which may have its unique catalytic properties. X-ray diffraction patterns of these microporous crystalline borosilicates are subjected to investigation, then, it is shown that the product structure has good crystallinity and is interpreted in terms of regular stacking of pentasil layers correlated by inversion centers (MFI structure) but interrupted by faults consisting of mirror-related layers (MEL structure). The products are also characterized by nitrogen adsorption at 77 K that shows higher microporous volume (0.160 cc/g) than that of pure MFI phase (0.119 cc/g). The obtained materials revealed high surface area (~600 m2/g). The infrared spectrum reveals the presence of an absorption band at 900.75 cm-1 indicating the incorporation of boron in tetrahedral sites in the silicate matrix of the crystalline phase.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.139-151
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• 2022

SAGD (Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage) method is widely used for oil recovery in oil sands regions. The SAGD operation causes surface displacement, which can affect the stability of oil recovery plants and trigger various geological disasters. Therefore, it isimportant to monitor the surface displacement due to SAGD in the oil sands region. In this study, the surface displacement due to SAGD operations of the Athabasca oil sands region in Alberta, Canada, was observed by applying Permanent Scatterer Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PSInSAR) technique to the Sentinel-1 time series SAR data acquired from 2016 to 2021. We also investigated the construction and expansion of SAGD facilitiesfrom Landsat-7/8 time seriesimages, from which the characteristics of the surface displacement according to the oil production activity of SAGD were analyzed. Uplift rates of 0.3-2.5 cm/yr in the direction of line of sight were observed over the SAGDs and their vicinity, whereas subsidence rates of -0.3--0.6 cm/yr were observed in areas more than several kilometers away from the SAGDs and not affected by oil recovery activities. Through the analysis of Landsat-7/8 images, we could confirm that the SAGDs operating after 2012 and showing high oil production activity caused uplift rates greater than 1.6 cm/yr due to the subsurface steam injection. Meanwhile, very small uplift rates of several mm per year occurred over SAGDs which have been operated for a longer period of time and show relatively low oil production activity. This was probably due to the compression of reservoir sandstone due to continuous oil recovery. The subsidence observed in areas except for the SAGDs and their vicinity estimated to be a gradual land subsidence caused by melting of the permafrost. Considering the subsidence, it was expected that the uplift due to SAGD operation would be greater than that observed by the PSInSAR. The results of this study confirm that the PSInSAR can be used as an effective means for evaluating productivity and stability of SAGD in the extreme cold regions.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2001.06d
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• pp.348-353
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• 2001

Experimental schemes that enable characterization of phase-change phenomena in the micro scale regime is essential for understanding the phase-change kinetics. Particularly, monitoring rapid vaporization on a submicron length scale is an important yet challenging task in a variety of laser-processing applications, including steam laser cleaning and liquid-assisted material ablation. This paper introduces a novel technique based on Michelson interferometry for probing the liquid-vaporization process on a solid surface heated by a KrF excimer laser pulse (${\lambda}=248nm,\;FWHM=24\;ns$) in water. The effective thickness of a microbubble layer has been measured with nanosecond time resolution. The maximum bubble size and growth rate are estimated to be of the order of $0.1{\mu}m\;and\;1\;m/s$, respectively. The results show that the acoustic enhancement in the laser induced vaporization process is caused by bubble expansion in the initial growth stage, not by bubble collapse. This work demonstrates that the interference method is effective for detecting bubble nucleation and microscale vaporization kinetics.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.25 no.8
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• pp.1140-1147
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• 2001

Experimental schemes that enable characterization of phase-change phenomena in the microscale regime are essential for understanding the phase-change kinetics. Particularly, monitoring rapid vaporization on a submicron length scale is an important yet challenging task in a variety of laser-processing application, including steam laser cleaning and liquid-assisted material ablation. This paper introduces a novel technique based on Michelson interferometry for probing the liquid-vaporization process on a solid surface heated by a KrF excimer laser pulse(λ=248nm, FWHM=24ns) in water. The effective thickness of a microbubble layer has been measured with nanosecond time resolution. The maximum bubble size and growth rate are estimated to be of the order of 0.1㎛ and 1m/s, respectively. The results show that the acoustic enhancement in the laser induced vaporization process is caused by bubble expansion in the initial growth stage, not by bubble collapse. This work demonstrates that the interference method is effective for detecting bubble nucleation and microscale vaporization kinetics.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.80-87
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• 2010

This study was conducted to develop a reservoir modelling workflow to reproduce the heterogeneous distribution of effective permeability that impacts on the performance of SAGD (Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage), the in-situ bitumen recovery technique in the Athabasca Oil Sands. Lithologic facies distribution is the main cause of the heterogeneity in bitumen reservoirs in the study area. The target formation consists of sand with mudstone facies in a fluvial-to-estuary channel system, where the mudstone interrupts fluid flow and reduces effective permeability. In this study, the lithologic facies is classified into three classes having different characteristics of effective permeability, depending on the shapes of mudstones. The reservoir modelling workflow of this study consists of two main modules; facies modelling and permeability modelling. The facies modelling provides an identification of the three lithologic facies, using a stochastic approach, which mainly control the effective permeability. The permeability modelling populates mudstone volume fraction first, then transforms it into effective permeability. A series of flow simulations applied to mini-models of the lithologic facies obtains the transformation functions of the mudstone volume fraction into the effective permeability. Seismic data contribute to the facies modelling via providing prior probability of facies, which is incorporated in the facies models by geostatistical techniques. In particular, this study employs a probabilistic neural network utilising multiple seismic attributes in facies prediction that improves the prior probability of facies. The result of using the improved prior probability in facies modelling is compared to the conventional method using a single seismic attribute to demonstrate the improvement in the facies discrimination. Using P-wave velocity in combination with density in the multiple seismic attributes is the essence of the improved facies discrimination. This paper also discusses sand matrix porosity that makes P-wave velocity differ between the different facies in the study area, where the sand matrix porosity is uniquely evaluated using log-derived porosity, P-wave velocity and photographically-predicted mudstone volume.