This paper will review the history of in situ pilot plant efforts towards the recovery of bitumen from the major oil sand deposits of Alberta. The review will be based on published information and will describe the location of the plants, the manner of operation, the estimated costs involved and the technical area under investigation. The currently operating pilot plants and future plans for new in situ pilots will also be described. INTRODUCTION This paper will present a survey of the planned, current and completed in situ pilot plant operations in the Alberta Oil Sands. The aim of the review is to provide an overview of the current field projects and to provide background concerning completed in situ pilot plant programs. Before beginning a consideration of the individual plants it is necessary to set the stage for the review by looking at some of the problems and formation properties which are encountered in the Alberta on Sands. Note that the term bitumen, tar and heavy oil are used interchangeably in this paper to describe hydrocarbon material with gravity less than 12 °API. The oil sands of Alberta, as shown in Figure 1, are located in four major deposits which cover an area of about 10.8 million acres in the northern half of the province. The total in place reserves are estimated to be 950 billion barrels(1) of which, 74 billion barrels or 8% of the total are covered by less than 150 feet of overburden and are considered suitable for economic surface mining. The surface mineable reserves are all located within the Athabasca deposit as indicated by the heavily shaded area in Figure 1. The amount of in place bitumen which has more than 500 feet of overburden and must be recovered by in situ methods is 10 times the surface mineable reserves; 741 billion barrels or 78% of the deposit. The remainder, 135 billion barrels are overlain by 150–500 ft. of overburden and it is uncertain at this time whether the heavy oil in these sands will be recovered by some form of mining or by novel in situ recovery methods. The consideration of the depth of the deposits points out the need for development of in situ recovery techniques in order to tap the majority of the reserves in the Alberta Oil Sands. RESERVOIR PROPERTIES The Alberta Oil Sand Reserves are situated in the Mannville Group of the Lower Cretaceous strata. All the oil sand deposits are quite heterogeneous, both laterally and vertically, with wide variations in oil, water and gaseous content. Some of the average oil sand formation properties are shown in Table 1. The Athabasca deposit has the largest in place reserves; 626 billion barrels or 66% of the total. The Cold Lake deposit is next largest with 164 billion barrels followed by the Wabasca and Peace River deposits. The Athabasca deposit is the only one inwhich the oil sand outcrops at the surface.
In this second part of the article we learn something more of the conditions in which corrosion of galvanizing can or cannot flourish and of the measures necessary for its prevention. Statistics are listed of experimental work on the life of hot‐dip galvanized coatings and related to different atmospheres.
A summary of a recent symposium on diffusion coatings, by one of the contributors. A thin layer of material may be bonded to a base metal or component by heat/chemical treatment to provide protection against corrosion or abrasion. There is need for wider circulation to industry of information about coatings.
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