New book ‘102 Things to Do with a Hole in the Ground‘ spotlights global reclamation projects
Stories of reinvented coal mining regions, regenerated communities and rebuilt ecosystems are told in a new book published this month.
Aerial view of Suncor’s oil sands extraction facility near Fort McMurray.
Suncor Energy (TSX, NYSE:SU), Canada’s largest oil and gas producer, is looking to replace high-pressure steam used to extract bitumen from oil sands with radio waves and so increase current environmental and energy efficiencies.
The technology, developed by U.S. defense contractor Harris Corporation, could help the oil sand industry reduce costs, greenhouse gas emissions and water usage, the company said in a statement.
The method, Enhanced Solvent Extraction Incorporating Electromagnetic Heating (ESEIEH, pronounced “easy”), consists on heating bitumen with radio frequency energy coming from a surface generator, will be tested for two years at Suncor’s Dover oil sands project in northern Alberta.
The ESEIEH project partners are Devon, Nexen Energy ULC, Suncor, Harris Corporation, with funding in part from the Climate Change and Emissions Management Corporation (CCEMC).
The group has been collaborating on this technology since 2011 with initial physical testing of the technology in 2012 at Suncor’s Steepbank mine facility. Testing will now begin at an in situ reservoir for approximately 24 months.
Here is how it works. (Graphic courtesy of Suncor)
But that is not the only innovation Suncor is trying to lower the cost of resource extraction in a soft market.
The company has also located nine possible locations to use a replication strategy for steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) extraction projects.
“The reason why we call it the replication strategy is we’re trying to come up with exactly the same designed plants,” the firm’s executive vice president, Mark Little, said at the company’s annual shareholders meeting April 30. “If the resource is there, we’re trying to figure out, how do you bring it to market at a less costly manner?”
Other highly sought-after technologies in the oil industry today are solar reclamation and organic solvent extraction.
Use of solar technology could replace expensive and power-intensive ultraviolet lamps in advanced wastewater filtration systems at a fraction of the cost.
Organic solvent extraction aims to eliminate the use of massive quantities water to heat the bitumen at the oil sands and cut emissions.
2 Comments
malcolmb
The absorption of radio frequency energy by electrolyte solutions was studied in detail by Forman and Crisp at Cambridge in 1946. Nothing new under the sun!
Reasonable Person
THIS IS NUTS!
1. Natural systems rely on biota in soil to filter water. What are they killing here?
2. What are the impacts on Vertical Fractures?
3. What are the seismic risks?
4. These waves cannot reasonably be isolated or contained from impacting adjacent locations.
5. What if this creates fractures that connect aquifers to salt tables? We could see massive sink holes, leaks and earthquakes as a consequence of this technology.
This is madness. This is unnatural and it has to stop. Just give it up folks. This project isn’t worth these kind of risks.