System comprising the gasification of fossil fuels to process unconventional oil sources

Abstract

A facility comprising integrated systems for the extraction, and optionally upgrading and / or refinement, of unconventional oil sources, using fossil fuels as a primary source of energy. In particular, this facility provides a means to gasify one or more fossil fuels in an efficient manner, converting it into intermediate products such as heat, steam and electricity, which are then used by the system to obtain useful fuel products from unconventional oil sources such as tar sands and oil shale. The design of the components of this facility is optimized such that the overall costs are competitive with an equivalent unconventional oil source processing facility that uses natural gas as a source of processing energy. The facility can be used on its own, may use supplemental natural gas energy sources, or may be used in conjunction with an existing facility that uses natural gas as an energy source in order to improve the overall cost effectiveness of the processing and / or reduce the requirement for other energy sources, such as natural gas.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application claims benefit of priority under 35 U.S.C. § 119(e) from U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60 / 917,612, filed May 11, 2007. This application also claims benefit of priority under 35 U.S.C. § 119(e) from U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60 / 917,410, filed May 11, 2007. This application also claims the benefit of priority to International Patent Application No. PCT / U.S.07 / 70456, filed Jun. 5, 2007. This application also claims benefit of priority under 35 U.S.C. § 119(e) from U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60 / 950,322, filed Jul. 17, 2007. This application also claims benefit of priority under 35 U.S.C. § 119(e) from U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60 / 986,213, filed Nov. 7, 2007. This application also claims benefit of priority under 35 U.S.C. §119(e) from U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60 / 986,212, filed Nov. 7, 2007. This application also claims the benefit of priority to International Patent Appl...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

This patent describes a facility and process for extracting useful fuel products from unconventional oil sources. The facility uses fossil fuels as a primary source of energy and includes a gasification system to convert fossil fuel into slag, off-gas, heat, and steam. A gas reformulation system is then used to convert the off-gas into a reformulated gas comprising hydrogen and carbon monoxide. This gas is then provided to one or more gas conversion systems to produce electricity, steam, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, or light oils, or a combination thereof. The resulting products are then extracted from the unconventional oil source using an extraction system. The technical effects of this invention include efficient conversion of unconventional oil sources to useful fuel products.

Problems solved by technology

However, most of these methods are still in the experimental phase.

This process is repeated until the cost of injecting steam becomes uneconomical, for instance if the cost is higher than the money made from producing oil.

The CSS method has the advantage that recovery factors are around 20 to 25% and the disadvantage that the cost to inject steam is high.

The upgrading process (also called cracking or distillation) into lighter oil products has been around for a while; however, doing so in an economic fashion has been difficult in small scale fields.

Typically more petcoke is produced than is used in the upgrading process, resulting in stockpiling of excess petcoke at or near the upgrading site.

Such coal includes low grade, high sulfur coal, which is not suitable for use in coal-fired power generators due to the production of emissions having high sulfur content.

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