Economic comparison of the thermal and hot-water process for recovery of oil from tar sands

A comparison of the economics of the Hot Water and Thermal Process for recovery of oil from the tar sands at Sunnyside is presented using a plant size of 25,000 B/D of hydrocarbon products. The Thermal Process will require an investment of approximately $120,000,000. The product is a low viscosity free flowing oil. This can be compared to the basic Hot Water Process with an investment of $69,200,000 but the product is a black viscus bitumen. By using a visbreaker to lower the viscosity and improve the quality of the product the investment of the Hot Water Process increases to $76,150,000. A delayed coker used in place of the visbreaker will increase the investment to $107,500,000 and produce a product even lighter than the Thermal Process. Petroleum coke is a by-product. In each of the 4 cases above the product is different. By investigating the operating cost of each process the value of each product can be determined. To gain a 20% rate of return on the investment the selling price of the products must be: $/Bbl Basic Hot Water Process 10.60 Hot Water & Visbreaker 10.78 Hot Water & Coker 12.57 Thermal Process 12.84 These costs are f.o.b. Sunnyside and do not include marketing and transportation costs. Refer to Figure 2 for a quick comparison of costs in the processes studied. Although the Thermal Process is a competitive process it does not appear to be a superior process. Perhaps this is why 8 of the 10 proposed or existing commercial oil sand ventures in Canada use hot water extraction. (The remaining 2 were in situ process and both applications have been withdrawn). The Thermal Process is offered by Lurgi-Ruhrgas.(U A small amount of pilot work was done in the late 1960's by Lurgi. Peterson and Gishler with their work in Canada in 1950 (2) also explored using the Thermal Process.