Abstract
The Toe-to-Heel Air Injection (THAI) combined with a catalytic add-on (CAPRI, CATalytic upgrading PRocess In-situ) have been a subject of investigation since 2002. The major challenges have been catalyst deactivation due to coke deposition and low temperatures (~ 300 °C) of the mobilised hot oil flowing over the catalyst packing around the horizontal well. Tetralin has been used to suppress coke formation and also improve upgraded oil quality due to its hydrogen-donor capability. Herein, inductive heating (IH) incorporated to the horizontal production well is investigated as one means to resolve the temperature shortfall. The effect of reaction temperature on tetralin dehydrogenation and hydrogen evolution over NiMo/Al2O3 catalyst at 250–350 °C, catalyst-to-steel ball ratio (70% v/v), 18 bar and 0.75 h−1 was investigated. As temperature increased from 250 to 350 °C, tetralin conversion increased from 40 to 88% while liberated hydrogen increased from 0.36 to 0.88 mol based on 0.61 mol of tetralin used. The evolved hydrogen in situ hydrogenated unreacted tetralin to trans and cis-decalins with the selectivity of cis-decalin slightly more at 250 °C while at 300–350 °C trans-decalin showed superior selectivity. With IH the catalyst bed temperature was closer to the desired temperature (300 °C) with a mean of 299.2 °C while conventional heating is 294.3 °C. This thermal advantage and the nonthermal effect from electromagnetic field under IH improved catalytic activity and reaction rate, though coke formation increased.
Highlights
Worldwide transportation energy consumption was forecast as 151 quadrillion Btu in 2040, which represents an increase of 44 quadrillion Btu from 2015 [1]
The inductive heated catalyst packing around the horizontal production well (CAPRI) reactor to be combined with the horizontal production well of the to-Heel Air Injection (THAI) process was replicated by a fixed-bed reactor, which comprises of a quartz glass tube where an induction coil was wrapped around it
The amount of hydrogen liberated from tetralin due to dehydrogenation to naphthalene, the conversion of tetralin, and the respective selectivity of naphthalene, trans and cis-decalins, and fixed-bed reaction kinetic are presented and discussion in Sects. 3.1 to 3.4
Summary
Worldwide transportation energy consumption was forecast as 151 quadrillion Btu in 2040, which represents an increase of 44 quadrillion Btu from 2015 [1]. A laboratory-scale inductive heated reactor was developed, and a mixed bed of catalyst and chemically inert steel balls susceptors used to convert electromagnetic field into heat, which increases the temperature of the catalytic bed to the reaction temperatures This is done with an emphasis on applications in THAI–CAPRI process for heavy oil recovery and in situ upgrading. The heat is generated rapidly in the area of interest; minimising heat lost, lowering energy costs, maintaining uniform temperature across the catalytic bed and ensuring controllability [10, 13] Another challenge with in situ catalytic upgrading of heavy oils using THAI–CAPRI is large coke deposition on the catalyst results in rapid deactivation, bed plugging and low quality of upgraded oil [14, 15]. First-order kinetics and a plug flow model were used to estimate the apparent rate constant and apparent activation energy of the reaction in both inductive and conventional heated systems
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