Going Sideways: Horizontal
Evaporators in SAGD
IDE Technologies took a vertical SAGD evaporator and tipped it over
Alberta Oil
The Opportunity
It’s well known that in situ oil recovery techniques
are significantly increasing Alberta’s oil production
profile – 2012 marked the first year steam-assisted
methods contributed more barrels toward overall oil
sands production than mining. But it’s also been a hassle for some operators to handle. Sunshine Oil Sands
Ltd.’s West Ells project is one example where the company is seeing short-term delays and inflating costs.
Direct costs for the project are now estimated to be
$496 million, up $28 million from an earlier estimate,
according to a Government of Alberta report. Costs
have been rising for numerous reasons: companies
spacing their wells too aggressively, maintenance cost
overruns, legal disputes and other mishaps.
But one of the most pressing might be efficiency
shortcomings in the supply chain. And in SAGD operations, evaporators are likely the most cumbersome
bits of equipment to get to site for a reasonable price.
Evaporators that tower over operations like Cenovus’s
Christina Lake project have to be assembled and
erected on site using a crane.
IDE Technologies Ltd. is attempting to slim that cost
with its newly manufactured horizontal evaporators.
While horizontal mechanical vapor compression
(MEVC) isn’t entirely new, IDE has found a fairly novel
way of employing its technology – and it all fits on the
bed of a truck.
The Strategy
IDE manufactured its SAGD evaporators with a focus on reducing the energy consumption of the technology while constructing it compactly so transporting
costs could also be reduced. It was roughly a two-year
process. As a result the evaporators operate between
10 and 15 kilowatt hours per cubic meter, or about 30
per cent lower than vertical units, according to Gilad
Cohen, head of industrial water business unit at IDE.
Similar units have been installed in other markets: two
MEVC systems, each with a capacity of roughly 600
cubic meters per day, have been operated by Wintershall, a German producer, for over 20 years.
The efficiency of evaporator systems is stricter than
ever, following the Alberta government’s recent
policy to cut boiler let-off from 20 per cent down to
10, creating an ever greater need to maximize the
heat from the vapors. The company also split its
compression chamber into two compartments,
cutting down on chemical buildup in the evaporation process.
The evaporators are roughly 15 meters long and
3.5 meters high, allowing them to be assembled in
Edmonton and shipped to site from there. IDE designed the evaporators in order to eliminate assembly and cut costs in maintenance; the compressor is
far more accessible when lying horizontally, the theory goes, than when it is off the ground, allowing
operations to continue while technicians solve the
problem. Each horizontal evaporator can be loaded
onto a single flatbed trailer and trucked to site,
though the horizontal technology tends to have lower capacity. One particular IDE model reaches up to
30,000 barrels per day.
The Payoff
IDE is a fairly new company in the Canadian market and has been seeking out energy firms for a little
more than four years. The company was in talks
with Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance over the
summer to raise the profile of the MEVC evaporators in the hope IDE would enter into pilot programs
with prominent producers. It also announced a partnership in July with Clean Harbors, a chemical development and cleaning company, to integrate the designs of both companies into existing and future
projects. The question is how to make a good product better, Cohen says. “Once we prove the attraction, I think we’ll see a lot of interest.”