January 18 2011

Innovation Anthology #369:

Energy, Environment, Oil Sands, Syncrude

It takes a lot of energy to process bitumen from Alberta’s oil sands.

So energy conservation can pay big dividends both economically and environmentally.

Jim Lorentz is a technology development manager at Syncrude. He says through co-generation, waste heat for the upgrader is used to heat water for the extraction process.

And there there other examples of energy savings.

JIM LORENTZ: When we introduced the hydro transport and cyclo feeders in our north mine installationm the original Clark hot water process had a 95 degree extraction process. And the introduction of hydro transport allowed us to reduce that to typically 55 degrees Celsius. We went to at our Aurora plant what we call mix boxes. So that’s allowed us to go from the process temperature from 55 degrees down to 42 degrees at Aurora. Over the last two years, we’ve saved over a 100 million dollars in energy costs which translates to 17 percent reduction in our energy bill.

According to Jim Lorentz, Syncrude uses solar power on its remote instruments and often feeds electricity back into the power grid.

Thanks today to Syncrude

FOR INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER

Guest

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Sponsor

Syncrude

Program Date: 2011-01-18