Online Monitoring of Bitumen Content in Oil Sands Using Differential Light Radar

加拿大原油日出口量已超过330万桶，2017年出口额为668.6亿美元。加拿大石油业面临的一个挑战是，从油砂中提取沥青的成本本身就很高。进一步降低成本将使加拿大石油行业更具竞争力，并减少其对环境的影响。目前的水基油砂开采工艺由多个步骤组成，需要不断调整参数。由于缺乏有效的在线监测工具，调整依赖运营商的经验，这往往不是最优的，并带来不必要的资源消耗。因此，开发可靠的在线监测方法对提高沥青抽提厂的工艺控制水平具有重要意义。该提案旨在调查光雷达(LiDAR)在油砂开采过程中的应用，以提供油砂中沥青含量的在线定量分析。激光雷达用激光照射目标，分析各种后向散射信号，以测量样品的性质。研究结果可用于优化沥青提炼工艺，减少对环境的影响，提高加拿大石油工业的竞争力。

Crude oil exports from Canada has exceeded 3.3 Million Barrels per Day, which represents a value of $66.86 billion in 2017. A challenge for Canadian oil industry is that it is inherently costly to extract bitumen from oil sands. Further cost reduction will make Canadian oil industry more competitive and reduce its environmental impact. The current water-based oil sands extraction process consists of multiple steps requiring continuous parameter adjustment. Because of a lack of effective on-line monitoring tools, the adjustment relies on the experience of the operators, which often is not optimal and introduces unnecessary consumption of resources. Therefore, developing reliable on-line methods to monitor the process streams is important for improving the process control in bitumen extraction plants. The proposal aims to investigate applications of light radar (LiDAR) in oil sands extraction processes to provide online quantitative analysis of bitumen content in oil sands. LiDAR illuminates a target with laser beams and analyze various types of backscattered signals to measure sample properties. The results can be used to optimize the bitumen extraction process, reduce the environmental impact, and enhance the competitiveness of Canadian petroleum industry.