Model Development and Simulation Study of Underground Coal Gasification

加拿大巨大的油砂资源的开发已经导致对天然气的需求增加，以产生用于沥青提取的蒸汽和作为用于沥青升级的氢源。然而，使用越来越多的天然气来处理相对低能量/高碳资源（例如沥青）是昂贵的且不可持续的。在对环境负责的过程中释放煤炭的全部能源潜力是加拿大油砂持续和可持续发展的关键。这些好处超越了油砂工业，并为目前使用天然气作为原料或能源的其他加拿大工业提供了重要的优势。加拿大的煤炭储量在全球排名第十，阿尔伯塔省的336亿吨煤炭占加拿大总储量的70%。因此，阿尔伯塔省的煤炭资源构成了一个巨大的未开发的能源来源。通过煤炭地下气化（UCG）生产合成气为使用天然气生产沥青提取和升级所需的蒸汽和氢气提供了替代方案。此外，可能有一个很大的潜力，后UCG二氧化碳捕获和封存。用于UCG的井基础设施随后可用于地质CO2封存操作。UCG处于研究和开发的早期阶段;几个关键的科学和技术领域，如UCG过程和运行监测，燃烧和气化建模，环境风险评估，以及UCG后CO2储存的可行性，需要进行广泛的研究。这些领域可以通过加速研究项目来解决。这个研究项目可以充分利用现有的知识和工程和地球科学模拟的进步。

The development of Canada's vast oil sands resource has led to increased demands for natural gas to produce steam for bitumen extraction and as a source of hydrogen for bitumen upgrading. However, using increasing volumes of natural gas to process relatively low energy/high carbon resources such as bitumen is costly and not sustainable. Unlocking the full energy potential of coal, in an environmentally responsible process, is key to the ongoing and sustainable development of Canada's oil sands. These benefits transcend the oil sands industry and offer important advantages to a range of other Canadian industries that currently use natural gas as a feedstock or energy source. Canada is ranked tenth worldwide in coal reserves, and Alberta's 33.6 billion tons of coal represents 70% of Canada's total reserves. Consequently, Alberta's coal resources constitute an enormous source of untapped energy. The production of syngas through underground coal gasification (UCG) provides alternatives to the use of natural gas to produce steam and hydrogen for bitumen extraction and upgrading. Furthermore, there may be a great potential for post-UCG CO2 capture and sequestration. The well infrastructure for UCG can be used subsequently for geologic CO2 sequestration operations. UCG is in the early stages of research and development; several key scientific and technical areas, such as UCG process and operation monitoring, combustion and gasification modeling, environmental risk assessment, and feasibility of post-UCG CO2 storage, require extensive research. These areas can be addressed with an accelerated research project. This research project can lever substantially off of existing knowledge and advances in engineering and geo-science simulations.