Study of corrosion/erosion and fouling mechanisms in syngas cooler by syngas from asphaltene gasification

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Alberta has 3rd largest oil sands deposit in the world next to Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. The production from oil sands has been planned to expand from 1.6 to 3.6 million barrels/d within 10 years in 2020 (1). Such an expansion in the production of oil sands requires a proportional increase in the hydrogen production for upgrading of bitumen from oil sands. Hydrogen is usually produced from steam reforming of natural gas. An alternative to obtain hydrogen is from gasification of coal pet-coke or asphaltenes. The Long Lake facility, operated by NEXEN, is the first large-scale integration of oil sands Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage and Upgrader with gasification. Asphaltene from the upgrader, of not much value as such, is used as the feedstock for gasification. The asphaltenes have an ash content below 0.5%, with significant proportions of vanadium and nickel compounds along with some fine quartz and clays. The syngas passes through a syngas cooler for the transfer of sensible heat to boiler feed water to produce steam. Some very fine soot and ash particles escape with syngas from the gasifier and cause erosion and corrosion in syngas cooler.