Tag Archives: Alberta oil sands

Abakan makes good on Alberta (Canada) promise (coating for better pipeline transport of oil)

It took three years but it seems that US company Abakan Inc.’s announcement of a joint research development centre at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT), (mentioned here in a May 7, 2012 post [US company, Abakan, wants to get in on the Canadian oils sands market]), has borne fruit. A June 8, 2015 news item on Azonano describes the latest developments,

Abakan Inc., an emerging leader in the advanced coatings and metal formulations markets, today announced that it has begun operations at its joint-development facility in Edmonton, Alberta.

Abakan’s subsidiary, MesoCoat Inc., along with the lead project partner, Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) will embark on an 18-month collaborative effort to establish a prototype demonstration facility for developing, testing and commercializing wear-resistant clad pipe and components. Western Economic Diversification Canada is also supporting this initiative through a $1.5 million investment toward NAIT. Improvements in wear resistance are expected to make a significant impact in reducing maintenance and downtime costs while increasing productivity in oil sands and other mining applications.

A June 4, 2015 Abakan news release, which originated the news item, provides more detail about the proposed facility, the difficulties encountered during the setup, and some interesting information about pipes,

Abakan shipped its CermaClad high-speed large-area cladding system for installation at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology’s (NAIT) campus in Edmonton, Alberta in early 2015. Despite delays associated with the installation of some interrelated equipment and machinery, the CermaClad system and other ancillary equipment are now installed at the Edmonton facility. The Edmonton facility is intended to serve as a pilot-scale wear-resistant clad pipe manufacturing facility for the development and qualification of wear-resistant clad pipes, and as a stepping stone for setting-up a full-scale wear-resistant clad pipe manufacturing facility in Alberta. The new facility will also serve as a platform for Abakan’s introduction to the Alberta oil sands market, which, with proven reserves estimated at more than 169 billion barrels, is one of the largest oil resources in the world and a major source of oil for Canada, the United States and Asia. Since Alberta oil sands production is expected to increase significantly over the next decade, producers want to extend the life of the carbon steel pipes used for the hydro-transportation of tailings with harder, tougher coatings that protect pipes from the abrasiveness of tar-like bituminous oil sands.

“Our aim is to fast-track market entry of our wear-resistant clad pipe products for the transportation of oil sands and mining slurries. We have received commitments from oil sands producers in Canada and mining companies in Mexico and Brazil to field-test CermaClad wear-resistant clad pipe products as soon as our system is ready for testing. Apart from our work with conventional less expensive chrome carbide and the more expensive tungsten carbide wear-resistant cladding on pipes, Abakan also expects to introduce new iron-based structurally amorphous metal (SAM) alloy cladding that in testing has exhibited better performance than tungsten carbide cladding, but at a fraction of the cost.” Robert Miller stated further that “although more expensive than the more widely used chrome carbide cladding, our new alloy cladding is expected to be a significantly better value proposition when you consider an estimated life of three times that of chrome carbide cladding and those cost efficiencies that correspond to less downtime revenue losses, and lower maintenance and replacement costs.”

The costs associated with downtime and maintenance in the Alberta oil sands industry estimated at more than $10 billion a year are expected to grow as production expands, according to the Materials and Reliability in Oil Sands (MARIOS) consortium in Alberta. The development of Alberta’s oil sands has been held up by the lack of materials for transport lines and components that are resistant to the highly abrasive slurry. Due to high abrasion, the pipelines have to be rotated every three to four months and replaced every 12 to 15 months. [emphasis mine] The costs involved just in rotating and replacing the pipes is approximately $2 billion annually. The same is true of large components, for example the steel teeth on the giant electric shovels used to recover oil sands, must be replaced approximately every two days.

Abakan’s combination of high productivity coating processes and groundbreaking materials are expected to facilitate significant efficiencies associated with the extraction of these oil resources. Our proprietary materials combined with CermaClad large-area based fusion cladding technology, have demonstrated in laboratory tests a three to eight times improvement in wear and corrosion resistance when compared with traditional weld overlays at costs comparable to rubber and metal matrix composite alternatives. Abakan intends to complete development and initiate field-testing by end of year 2016 and begin the construction of a full-scale wear-resistant clad pipe manufacturing facility in Alberta in early-2017.

Given that there is extensive talk about expanding oil pipelines from Alberta to British Columbia (where I live), the information about the wear and tear is fascinating and disturbing. Emotions are high with regard to the proposed increase in oil flow to the coast as can be seen in a May 27, 2015 article by Mike Howell for the Vancouver Courier about a city hall report on the matter,

A major oil spill in Vancouver waters could potentially expose up to one million people to unsafe levels of a toxic vapour released from diluted bitumen, city council heard Wednesday in a damning city staff report on Kinder Morgan’s proposal to build a pipeline from Alberta to Burnaby [British Columbia].

In presenting the report, deputy city manager Sadhu Johnston outlined scenarios where exposure to the chemical benzene could lead to adverse health effects for residents and visitors, ranging from dizziness to nausea to possible death.

“For folks that are on the seawall, they could be actually struck with this wave of toxic gases that could render them unable to evacuate,” said Johnston, noting 25,000 residents live within 300 metres of the city’s waterfront. “These are serious health impacts. So this is not just about oil hitting shorelines, this is about our residents being exposed to very serious health effects.

  • Kinder Morgan’s own estimate is that pipeline leaks under 75 litres per hour may not be detected.

While I find the presentation’s hysteria a little off-putting, it did alert me to one or two new issues, benzene gas and when spillage from the pipes raises an alarm. For anyone curious about benzene gas and other chemical aspects of an oil spill, there’s a US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) webpage titled, Chemistry of an Oil Spill.

Getting back to the pipes, that figure of 75 litres per hour puts a new perspective on the proposed Abakan solution and it suggests that whether or not more and bigger pipes are in our future, we should do a better of job of protecting our environment now. That means better cladding for the pipes and better dispersants and remediation for water, earth, air when there’s a spill.

University of Calgary (Alberta, Canada) welcomes ‘oil sands’ researcher with two news releases

I gather the boffins at the University of Calgary are beside themselves with joy as they welcome Steven Bryant from Texas, a nanoscience researcher with long ties to oil industry research. From an Oct. 17, 2014 University of Calgary news release by Stéphane Massinon,

The greatest energy challenge of the 21st century is to meet energy demand from available fuels while drastically reducing society’s environmental footprint.

The challenge is massive. The solution, according to Steven Bryant, may be miniscule.

Bryant will lead and co-ordinate nanotechnology and materials science research at the University of Calgary, and the integrated team of researchers from across campus who will aim to drastically change how the oilsands are developed.

Bryant says Alberta’s oilsands are a key resource for meeting the world’s energy demands and the status quo is not acceptable.

“There is a huge desire to extract this energy resource with less environmental impact and, we think, conceivably even zero-impact, because of some of the cool things that are becoming possible with nanotechnology,” says Bryant.

“That’s kind of blue-sky but that’s one of the things we will be trying to sow the seeds for — alternative ways to get the energy out of this resource altogether. It’s a chance to do things better than we are currently doing them because of rapid advances in mesoscience.”

The mention of mesoscience called to mind the mesocosm project featured in an Aug. 15, 2011 posting (Mesocosms and nanoparticles at Duke University) although it seems that mesoscience is a somewhat different beast according to Massinon’s news release,

Mesoscience — technology developed at smaller than 100 nanometres — offers many tantalizing options to increase the efficiency of in-situ oilsands development, or Steam-Assisted Gravity drainage (SAGD). SAGD is the extraction process in which producers drill horizontal wells beneath the surface to pump steam into the underground oilsands reservoirs to loosen the oil and pump it to the surface.

SAGD is the method currently used to pump nearly one million barrels per day in Alberta and the output is forecast to double by 2022. SAGD uses considerable volumes of water and requires energy to heat the water to produce the steam that softens the underground oil that is caked in sand.

By using nanotechnology, Bryant and his team are working on reducing the amount of energy needed to heat water to create steam while also making the underground heat source more efficient at gathering more oil.

“The holy grail for the last 30 years has been trying to get CO2 to be less viscous. If you can do that, then you can get it to contact a lot more of the oil and for the same amount of CO2, you get a lot more oil produced. That turned out to be hard to do because there aren’t many chemical ways to make CO2 more viscous,” says Bryant.

By employing innovative approaches now, industry, environment and consumers can benefit greatly in the not-too-distant future.

“These alternative ways to get the energy out are at least 10 years away. So it’s not going to happen tomorrow, but it’s worth thinking about now to try to see what might be possible,” says Bryant.

Apparently, Bryant (no mention of family members) is terribly excited about moving to Calgary, from the news release,

Bryant is looking forward to working in Canada’s energy hub and says he will also work with industry to tackle oil production issues.

Industry wants to be more efficient at extracting oil because it saves them money. Efficiency also means reducing the environmental footprint. He believes oil companies will welcome the research produced from the university and said Calgary is the ideal place to be world leaders in energy production and energy research.

“The university is close to where the action is. All the major operators are in town and there’s a chance to take things from the lab to the field. The University of Calgary is very well situated in that regard.”

Bryant is joining the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering in the Schulich School of Engineering. Before accepting this position, he was at the University of Texas at Austin, as Bank of America Centennial Professor in the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering, and directed the Geological CO2 Storage Joint Industry Project and the Nanoparticles for Subsurface Engineering Industrial Affiliates Program.

Bryant pioneered the fields of digital petrophysics and nanoparticles for engineering applications, and has made some of the most significant advances in the past 20 years in porous media modeling, reactive transport theory and CO2 sequestration. Bryant has been published more than 280 times in books, book chapters, peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings on applications in production engineering, reservoir engineering and formation evaluation. Over his career, Bryant has led major research initiatives involving industry partnerships and trained over 90 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who found positions in several of the largest energy companies and national laboratories.

He looks forward to what happens next.

“There’s still a lot of cool, basic science to be done, but we’ll be doing it with an eye to making a difference in terms of how you get energy out of the oilsands. This won’t be business as usual.”

Meanwhile, there’s an Oct. 17, 2014 news item on Azonano that focuses on the University of Calgary’s response to receiving its first Canada Excellence Research Chair (a programme where the federal Canadian government throws a lot of money for salaries and research at universities which then try to recruit ‘world class’ researchers),

A world-leading nanotechnology researcher has come to Canada’s energy capital to become the first Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) at the University of Calgary.

Minister of State (Western Economic Diversification) Michelle Rempel announced today $10 million in federal funding to the university over seven years to create the CERC for Materials Engineering for Unconventional Oil Reservoirs. These funds will be matched by the University of Calgary.

The CERC has been awarded to renowned researcher Steven Bryant, who has joined the Schulich School of Engineering and will integrate a team of researchers from several departments of the Schulich School of Engineering and Faculty of Science.

An Oct. 17, 2014 University of Calgary news release (no byline is given but this is presumably from the university’s ‘corporate’ communications team), which originated the news item on Azonano,

Rempel said the federal government is focused on developing, attracting, and retaining world-leading researchers through record investment in science, technology and innovation. She added that Bryant’s application of new nanomaterials and technology will seek to develop new efficiencies within the oilsands industry while training the next generation of highly talented Canadian researchers.

“Our government is committed to ensuring advancement in sustainable energy resource technology. Dr. Bryant’s arrival at the University of Calgary will help consolidate Canada’s position as a global leader in this area. The research being conducted at the university is good for Calgary, good for the economy and good for Canada,” said Rempel.

President Elizabeth Cannon thanked the federal government for its financial support and said Bryant’s arrival vaults the university’s existing energy research to the next level.

“The University of Calgary is thrilled to have Dr. Steven Bryant join our energy research team, where he will play a key role exploring new and sustainable ways of developing unconventional resources,” said Cannon.

“We are confident that Dr. Bryant and his colleagues, working here at Canada’s energy university, will offer innovative solutions to the pressing challenges faced by our society: meeting ever-growing energy demands and drastically reducing our environmental footprint.”

In addition to the matching funds, the University of Calgary is planning additional support for major infrastructure and equipment for the CERC.

In 2008, the federal government launched the CERC program to encourage some of the most accomplished researchers around the world to work at Canadian universities.

The Canada Excellence Research Chair plays a significant role in the university’s energy strategy, which aims to make the University of Calgary a global leader in energy research. It is also critical to our Eyes High goal to becoming a top five Canadian research university.

Attracting world-class researchers to campus helps attract more students and post-docs to the university and exposes students and faculty to some of the world’s cutting-edge research.

Oddly, there’s no message of congratulations or recognition of this addition to Alberta’s nanotechnology community from Canada’s National Institute for Nanotechnology (NINT) located at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.

Carbon Management Canada announces research for an affordable CO2 nanosensor

Researchers at the University of Toronto (Ontario) and St. Francis Xavier University (Nova Scotia) have received funding from Carbon Management Canada (a Network Centre for Excellence [NCE]) to develop an ultra-sensitive and affordable CO2 nanosensor. From the Feb. 4, 2013 news item on Nanowerk,

Researchers at the Universities of Toronto and St. Francis Xavier are developing an affordable, energy efficient and ultra-sensitive nano-sensor that has the potential to detect even one molecule of carbon dioxide (CO2).

Current sensors used to detect CO2 at surface sites are either very expensive or they use a lot of energy. And they’re not as accurate as they could be. Improving the accuracy of measuring and monitoring stored CO2 is seen as key to winning public acceptance of carbon capture and storage as a greenhouse gas mitigation method.

With funding from Carbon Management Canada (CMC), Dr. Harry Ruda of the Centre for Nanotechnology at the University of Toronto and Dr. David Risk of St. Francis Xavier are working on single nanowire transistors that should have unprecedented sensitivity for detecting CO2 emissions.

The Carbon Management Canada (CMC) Feb. 4, 2013 news release, which originated the news item, provides  details about the funding and reasons for the research,

CMC, a national network that supports game-changing research to reduce CO2 emissions in the fossil energy industry as well as from other large stationary emitters, is providing Ruda and his team $350,000 over three years. [emphasis mine] The grant is part of CMC’s third round of funding which saw the network award $3.75 million to Canadian researchers working on eight different projects.

The sensor technology needed to monitor and validate the amount of CO2 being emitted has not kept pace with the development of other technologies required for carbon capture and storage (CCS), says Ruda.

“This is especially true when it comes to surface monitoring verification and accounting (MVA),” he says. “Improving MVA is essential to meet the potential of carbon capture and storage.”

And that’s where the ultra-sensitive sensor comes in. “It’s good for sounding the alarm but it’s also good from a regulatory point of view because you want to able to tell people to keep things to a certain level and you need sensors to ensure accurate monitoring of industrial and subsurface environments,” Ruda says.

Given CMC’s vision for ‘game-changing research to reduce carbon emissions’, it bears noting that this organization is located in Calgary (the street address ‘EEEL 403, 2500 University Drive NW Calgary‘ as per my search today [Feb.4.13] on Google [https://www.google.ca/search?q=CMC+address+Calgary&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a] suggests the University of Calgary houses the organization). Calgary is the home of the Canadian fossil fuel industry and a centre boasting many US-based fossil fuel-based companies due to its size and relative proximity to the Alberta oil sands (aka, Athabaska oil sands). From the Wikipedia essay (Note: Links and footnotes have been removed),

The Athabasca oil sands or Athabasca tar sands are large deposits of bitumen or extremely heavy crude oil, located in northeastern Alberta, Canada – roughly centred on the boomtown of Fort McMurray. These oil sands, hosted in the McMurray Formation, consist of a mixture of crude bitumen (a semi-solid form of crude oil), silica sand, clay minerals, and water. The Athabasca deposit is the largest known reservoir of crude bitumen in the world and the largest of three major oil sands deposits in Alberta, along with the nearby Peace River and Cold Lake deposits.

Together, these oil sand deposits lie under 141,000 square kilometres (54,000 sq mi) of boreal forest and muskeg (peat bogs) and contain about 1.7 trillion barrels (270×109 m3) of bitumen in-place, comparable in magnitude to the world’s total proven reserves of conventional petroleum. Although the former CEO of Shell Canada, Clive Mather, estimated Canada’s reserves to be 2 trillion barrels (320 km3) or more, the International Energy Agency (IEA) lists Canada’s reserves as being 178 billion barrels (2.83×1010 m3).

As for locating a carbon management organization in Calgary, it does make sense of a sort. Here’s a somewhat calmer description of Carbon Management Canada on the website’s About CMC page,

Carbon Management Canada CMC-NCE [Network Centre for Escellence] is a national network of academic researchers working with experts in the fossil energy industry, government, and the not-for-profit sector. Together, we are developing the technologies, the knowledge and the human capacity to radically reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the fossil energy industry and other large stationary emitters.

Carbon emissions and the growing global concern about its effects present a unique opportunity for innovation and collaboration, especially in the fossil energy industry. Rapidly increasing global complexity demands robust, responsive innovation that can only develop in a highly collaborative context involving industry, scientists, policy makers, politicians and industry leaders in concert with an informed, supportive public.

Carbon Management Canada is the national body charged with harnessing the collective energy of this diverse group in order to push forward an ambitious agenda of innovation and commercialization to bring research from the lab into the world of practice.

Funding

Funding for CMC was provided through the federal Networks of Centres of Excellence ($25 million) and the Province of Alberta through Alberta Environment ($25 million). Industry has also provided $5.7 million in contributions.

The Network has over 160 investigators at 27 Canadian academic institutions and close to 300 graduate and postdoctoral students working on research projects. CMC currently has invested $22 million in 44 research projects.

Our Themes

CMC is an interdisciplinary network with scientists working in fields that range from engineering to nanotechnology to geoscience to business to political science and communications. These investigators work in 4 themes: Recovery, Processing and Capture; Enabling and Emerging Technologies; Secure Carbon Storage; and Accelerating Appropriate Deployment of Low Carbon Emission Technologies.

Given that CMC is largely government-funded, it seems odd (almost as if they don’t want anyone to know) that the website does not feature a street address. In addition to trying  a web search, you can find the information on the last page of the 2012 annual/financial report. One final note, the chair of CMC’s board is Gordon Lambert who is also Vice President, Sustainable Development, Suncor Energy. From Suncor’s About Us webpage,

n 1967, we pioneered commercial development of Canada’s oil sands — one of the largest petroleum resource basins in the world. Since then, Suncor has grown to become a globally competitive integrated energy company with a balanced portfolio of high-quality assets, a strong balance sheet and significant growth prospects. Across our operations, we intend to achieve production of one million barrels of oil equivalent per day.

Then, there’s this on the company’s home page,

We create energy for a better world

Suncor’s vision is to be trusted stewards of valuable natural resources. Guided by our values, we will lead the way to deliver economic prosperity, improved social well-being and a healthy environment for today and tomorrow.

The difficulty I’m highlighting is the number of competing interests. Governments which are dependent on industry for producing jobs and tax dollars are also funding ‘carbon management’. The fossil fuel-dependent industry make a great deal money from fossil fuels and doesn’t have much incentive to explore carbon management as that costs money and doesn’t add to profit. Regardless of how enlightened any individuals within that industry may be they have a fundamental problem similar to an asthmatic who’s being poisoned by the medication they need to breathe. Do you get immediate relief from the medication, i.e., breathe, or do you refuse the medication which causes damage years in the future and continue struggling for air?

All of these institutions (CMC, Suncor, etc.) would have more credibility if they addressed the difficulties rather than ignoring them.

Green nanotechnology in Alberta’s oil sands

GE (General Electric) has announced that it is partnering with the University of Alberta (UA) and Alberta Innovates Technology Futures (AITF) to develop techniques that reduce carbon dioxide transmissions from extraction and upgrading processes and from the treatment process for the water generated during oil recovery. From the news item on Nanowerk,

In the quest to develop more cost-effective ways to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuels, GE is partnering with the University of Alberta (UA) and Alberta Innovates Technology Futures (AITF) on a $4 million CO2 capture project supported by the Climate Change and Emissions Management (CCEMC) Corporation.

The technology is based on naturally occurring zeolites identified by UA. These materials are rocks with molecularly sized pores, which allow small molecules to enter while excluding larger molecules. Zeolites are widely used in the chemical industry as catalysts, and this project seeks to form these materials into membranes that can be used for high temperature gas separation. The materials also have the potential to be used as filters for contaminated water. The CCEMC is providing $2 million in support of this project, with an equal cost share from GE and its project partners.

[Anthony] Ku [chemical engineer and project leader for GE Global Research on the carbon dioxide capture project] noted that  successful commercialization and widespread adoption of this technology could reduce CO2 emissions from the production of synthetic crude oil from the Oil Sands by up to 25%.

I’m glad to see another initiative in Alberta aimed at reducing environmental impacts. Last year in Sept. 2009, Alberta’s Premier (Ed Steilmach) signed a memorandum of understanding with Rice University (based in Texas) to collaborate on initiatives similar to this. (Sept. 22, 2009 posting)