How to “Ennoble” Heavy Oil in the Reservoir
…And extract rare earth metals from it.
New catalysts for the underground upgrading of extra-viscous oil have made it possible to increase production at the Tatneft well. With the help of Kazan Federal University technology, great success was also achieved at the Cuban Boca de Jaruco field. Its development is jointly carried out by the state-owned companies Zarubezhneft and Cupet.
Mikhail Varfolomeev, head of the department at the Institute of Geology and Oil and Gas Technologies, KFU, informed the Devon news agency about this after the presentation of the book Catalytic In-Situ Upgrading of Heavy and Extra-Heavy Crude Oils.
Here are some additional details from this presentation.
PIONEERS IN EXTRA-VISCOUS OIL PRODUCTION.
Mikhail Varfolomeev:
For the Cuban project of Zarubezhneft, the third batch of catalyst for underground processing of heavy oil is already being produced. The injection of steam together with catalysts made it possible to increase production from 1,000 tons to 3,000 tons per cycle. Additional production amounted to about 2,000 tons of raw materials per well (more on this in the material of IA Devon).
Today, the industry is actively using digital tools. In this book, we have shown how they can be used to study in detail the behavior of catalysts at the molecular level. We can evaluate them in a porous medium. The book also contains a chapter on the application of aquathermolysis to the entire field.
The book was written as part of a world-class laboratory project supported by the Russian Science Foundation, whose industrial partner is Zarubezhneft JSC. The development of catalysts is one of the first such projects in Russia.
Professor, leading researcher at the Mexican Institute of Petroleum and KFU Anchita JORGE: – The idea of writing a book was born at the international conference on thermal methods of enhanced oil recovery ThEOR, which Kazan University held in 2018 (note Inform-Devon: It was first held in Kazan in 2016 ).
– In 2021, the idea came up to write this book, bringing together all the leading experts. The monograph aroused great interest among specialists. We have shown in it both the fundamental component and the practical aspects. We can be called pioneers in this field.
– The problem of heavy oil production is important for Russia, Mexico, Venezuela and other countries. We use technologies for oil production (steam injection). To this we add processing technologies with the help of catalysts. This is how we increase production efficiency.
LOOK INSIDE THE OIL.
Senior researcher at KFU Irek Mukhamatdinov:
– Despite the fact that the mechanism of aquathermolysis has been known for a long time, the process is not yet fully understood.
Spectroscopy and other methods provide answers to many questions. For example, how the structure of asphaltenes changes, how to calculate the amount of free radicals, etc. One important technique is nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. It allows you to calculate the amount of primary hydrocarbons, as well as see what happened to the oil molecule after conversion.
Calculations by Fourier-IR spectroscopy make it possible to qualitatively analyze the data, to study oil and its fractions in more detail before and after conversion.
The method makes it possible to calculate aromaticity, oxidation and branching. It is possible to clarify the fundamentals of in situ formation and find out what processes occur in the process of oil conversion.
In aquathermolysis, different catalysts are used: oil and water-soluble, metal suspensions. Certain metals and solutions are selected for each deposit. They make it possible to refine oil more effectively by reducing its viscosity. This makes it possible to increase hydrocarbon production.
For example, RITEK constantly had to flush downhole pumping equipment. After the use of catalysts, stable operation of the equipment is observed.
TRANSFER PROCESSING UNDERGROUND.
Director of the Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis named after A.V. Topchieva RAS Anton Maksimov – about the methods of mass spectrometry and chromatography:
– The first method is one of the most interesting. Mass spectrometry makes it possible to study the component composition of oil at the level of tens and hundreds of thousands of compounds.
– The presented book also contains a description of studies using chromatographic analysis. These are the methods that should be used with traditional physicochemical methods of analysis (NMR, electron paramagnetic resonance, EPR).
– This allows us to understand not only the composition of hydrocarbons, but also how they change inside the reservoir or in refineries. These “methods of the future” make it possible to visualize such a complex natural object as oil.
– We also participated in writing chapters on different types of catalysts for the hydroconversion of heavy ends. For example, nanocatalysts based on molybdenum sulfide. This chapter is based on an analysis of all the data obtained in the world, as well as the results obtained in a world-class laboratory. This project was supported by the Russian Science Foundation and Tatneft.
For the first time, the activity of such catalysts, which formed the basis for the processing of heavy oil residues at the TANECO refinery, was analyzed in detail. These solutions may be of interest for in situ hydroconversion of oil. This is important not only to reduce viscosity, but also to transfer the chemical processes of the refinery underground.
“VITAMINS” FOR ECONOMY.
Rare earth elements are needed to produce new catalysts. The problem of their production was raised by the General Director of Tatneftekhiminvest-holding JSC Rafinat Yarullin:
– The Soviet Union possessed 15% of all rare earth elements in the world. Now the Russian Federation has only 1%. Rare earth metals are a pass to the sphere of new technologies, vitamins for the development of the economy. The heavier the oil, the more useful compounds it contains. Much more petrochemical products can be obtained from such raw materials. This is a promising direction.
It is important to extract elements such as vanadium and molybdenum from “black gold”. Tatarstan and Samara oil is rich in vanadium. But there is no good market technology for extracting vanadium from oil yet.
Earlier, IA Devon reported that a new efficient oxidation catalyst had been developed at Kazan Federal University. It does not contain expensive noble metals, but is able to increase the efficiency of thermal methods of oil production.
