SBIR Phase I: Laser activated viscosity reduction and upgrading of bitumen for transportation to refineries

SBIR 第一阶段：激光激活沥青粘度降低和升级，用于运输到炼油厂

• 批准号: 1548948
• 负责人: Partha Dutta
• 金额: $ 14.98万
• 依托单位: Lunas Power Inc.
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-01-01 至 2016-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1548948&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBIR; Phase; Laser; activated; viscosity

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will develop a revolutionary new technology for upgrading and reducing the viscosity of bitumen, an oil sands feedstock. Bitumen is a major source of heavy crude oil for the US, but has 10,000-100,000 times higher viscosity than traditional crude, requiring producers to decrease its viscosity prior to transport to refineries, using highly volatile and costly additives (diluents). This requirement adds $9-14 of cost per barrel and consumes valuable transport capacity (the diluent occupies a third of a barrel of raw bitumen), intensifying the need for additional rail/pipeline transport capacity. This Phase I project will develop fundamental knowledge about a new, patent-pending, laser-based process that has recently demonstrated significant reduction in bitumen viscosity without the use of diluent or other chemicals. This effort constitutes a critical step in commercializing the process and realizing turnkey equipment for use by bitumen producers in Canada and beyond. It is estimated that processing 100,000 barrels/day (BPD) via this process could save producers approximately $400 million annually. If implemented, this process would also drastically decrease the environmental risk associated with diluent transport.The intellectual merit of this project lies in the photo-activated disintegration of chemical bonds using a nonlinear optical, multiphoton absorption process, coupled with fluid rheology control in viscoelastic fluid. The photonic technology in this project utilizes the absolute minimum energy necessary to selectively crack large hydrocarbon molecules into smaller molecules and requires no chemical additives. In laboratory-scale research, this process has successfully reduced the viscosity of raw bitumen by three orders of magnitude and enhanced the American Petroleum Institute (API) gravity, taking the feedstock from an immobile complex molecular ensemble to an upgraded, free-flowing fluidic state. The nonlinear optical process provides enhanced optical absorption in the material, thus resulting in better energy utilization for the chemical bond breaking process and associated viscosity change, in comparison to thermal visbreaking, the current industry-standard process. This Phase I project will develop fundamental understanding of the experimental parameters (such as wavelength, irradiance and exposure time of optical radiation) necessary to maximize the basic cracking process efficiency and to control the aklyation, aromaticity and polymerization processes needed to premium-quality petroleum products. In turn, the fundamental knowledge acquired will guide the future development of commercial-scale equipment with this process.

这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目将开发一种革命性的新技术，用于提升和降低油砂原料沥青的粘度。沥青是美国重质原油的主要来源，但其粘度是传统原油的10,000-10,000倍，这要求生产商在运往炼油厂之前降低其粘度，使用高挥发性和昂贵的添加剂(稀释剂)。这一要求增加了每桶9-14美元的成本，并消耗了宝贵的运输能力(稀释剂占据了一桶生沥青的三分之一)，加剧了对额外铁路/管道运输能力的需求。这个第一阶段的项目将发展一种新的、正在申请专利的基于激光的工艺的基础知识，该工艺最近显示出在不使用稀释剂或其他化学品的情况下沥青粘度显著降低。这一努力是将该工艺商业化并实现交钥匙设备的关键一步，供加拿大及其他地区的沥青生产商使用。据估计，通过这一过程每天加工10万桶石油，每年可为生产商节省约4亿美元。如果实施，这一过程还将极大地降低与稀释剂运输相关的环境风险。该项目的智能优点在于利用非线性光学、多光子吸收过程来光激活化学键的分解，以及粘弹性流体中的流体流变性控制。该项目中的光子技术利用绝对最小的能量来选择性地将大的碳氢分子裂解成更小的分子，并且不需要任何化学添加剂。在实验室规模的研究中，这一过程成功地将原始沥青的粘度降低了三个数量级，并增强了美国石油学会(API)的重力，使原料从固定的复杂分子系进入升级的、自由流动的流体状态。与目前的工业标准工艺--热降粘工艺相比，非线性光学工艺可增强材料的光吸收，从而为化学键断裂工艺和相关的粘度变化带来更好的能量利用率。这一阶段的项目将加深对实验参数(如光辐射的波长、辐照度和曝光时间)的基本了解，这些参数是最大限度地提高基本裂解工艺效率并控制优质石油产品所需的烷基化、芳香度和聚合工艺所必需的。反过来，所获得的基本知识将指导这一过程中商业规模设备的未来发展。