CAPRI horizontal well reactor for catalytic upgrading of heavy oil

The vast heavy oil and far sands resources in Canada, Venezuela, the United States and other parts of the world will remain largely underutilized, unless more economic means are found to upgrade them to higher quality oil stocks. Surface upgrading processes, or Stage I Technol., incur high costs because of the investment needed in thermal coker plants and assocd. hydrogen generation plants. Included also in this category, is the higher conversion hydroconversion processes, which operate at much higher temps. and pressures. Here, the initial capex required is very large, around $3 billion for a 200,000 bbl/day capacity unit. Advanced in situ processes, incorporating high recovery and catalytic upgrading steps, are a potential route to more efficient, more economic Stage II technol. [on SciFinder (R)]