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

加拿大的原油出口量已超过每天330万桶，2017年的价值为668.6亿美元。加拿大石油工业面临的一个挑战是，从油砂中提取沥青的成本本来就很高。进一步降低成本将使加拿大石油工业更具竞争力，并减少其对环境的影响。目前的水基油砂提取工艺由需要连续参数调整的多个步骤组成。由于缺乏有效的在线监测工具，调整依赖于操作员的经验，这往往不是最佳的，并引入了不必要的资源消耗。因此，开发可靠的在线方法来监测工艺流对于改善沥青提取厂的过程控制是重要的。该提案旨在研究光雷达（LiDAR）在油砂提取过程中的应用，以提供油砂中沥青含量的在线定量分析。LiDAR用激光束照射目标，并分析各种类型的后向散射信号以测量样品特性。研究结果可用于优化沥青提取工艺，减少环境影响，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.