The significance of operating parameters on electromagnetic-solvent bitumen recovery process

Abstract Current thermal bitumen recovery processes are highly vulnerable to the low oil price environments. Solvents-aided processes could be a promising option over Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD), with the potential for lowered initial capital investment and reduced operating costs. Enhanced Solvent Extraction Incorporating Electromagnetic Heating (ESEIEH®) technology is a novel process where electromagnetic waves and hydrocarbon solvents are employed for bitumen recovery. This study examines the significance of operating parameters on the electromagnetic-solvent process when the injected solvent is either pure propane or pure butane. The effect of several parameters, including operating pressure and applied power on various response surface models, were examined using Design of Experiment and multivariate regression analysis. Results show that the operating pressure is the main governing factor for the selection of the solvent type, while other parameters such as applied power are less significant. Generally, it is recommended to operate the process at native reservoir pressure to minimize the risk of loss of expensive solvents into the thief zones. Lack of reservoir containment (leakiness) is another important factor in the process design, especially when prescribing an operating pressure regime considerably different than that of the surrounding impairments. Due to a wide variation of the in-situ bitumen viscosity in different oil sands reservoirs, each bitumen type requires a different solvent mole fraction to mobilize the bitumen. For the type of bitumen used in this study, the optimum pressure range for butane was found to be around 800–1000 kPa, and for propane injection, around 2400–2600 kPa.