Balls of bitumen: Calgary breakthrough could bypass tube problem, researcher says

September 07, 2017
Technology

A Calgary operative thinks an invention he stumbled on in a laboratory could renovate a approach Alberta gets a complicated oil to market.

Ian Gates was researching ways to ascent bitumen when he and his teamÂ accidentally found a approach to reduce it, creation it even some-more gelatinous â€” which, in turn, led to a find that they could pouch a oil in self-sealingÂ pellets, with a glass core and super-viscous skin.

These tough small balls of bitumen could be a pipeline-free approach of removing Alberta oil to markets cheaply, sustainably and with reduction risk of environmental harm, pronounced a recover from theÂ University of Calgary’s Schulich School of Engineering, where Gates is a professor.

“We’ve taken complicated oil, or bitumen, possibly one, and we’ve detected a routine to modify them fast and reproducibly into pellets,” Gates told CBC News.

Bitumen balls could be a pipeline-free approach to ride Alberta oil0:30

“With this, we can put it in a customary rail car. It can go to any pier where a rail automobile goes, that is an measureless series of them, to get product out from North America.”

Gates says a pellets could be put in theÂ thousands ofÂ rail cars built for spark that are now sitting idle.

“Pipelines, they have their role. we don’t consider it will reinstate pipelines. This only offers one some-more mode of transport,” Gates told a Calgary Eyeopener.

“But positively we could see it displacing some of a exhilarated railcars.”

Gates and his group of researchers have grown a record to a indicate where they can make pellets of several sizes right during a wellhead, regulating about a same volume of appetite as it takes to supplement diluent to a bitumen to melt it for shipping around pipelines.

“Think Advil,” Gates said. “You have a chemical element … we’re afterwards exposing that material, on a outside, to a set of heat, vigour conditions, that afterwards produce a asphaltine-rich coating. So, unequivocally only a cloaking that end a middle material.”

ian gates

Ian Gates during a University of Calgaryâ€™s Schulich School of Engineering says his bitumen particle invention will make it cheaper and safer to ride Alberta’s appetite products by rail. (CBC)

Environmentally safe

The pellets are tough and can be safely ecstatic by rail or truckÂ without worrying about spills.

Because of a gas burble injected inside any pellet, they are also buoyant, Gates says.

“They’re good and hardy. If we put them in water, they’ll lay like that for a really prolonged time,” GatesÂ said.

“It’s a protected product for transport.”

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The investigate and a bid to interpret it into a commercially viable ideaÂ was upheld by a U of C’s Innovate Calgary, a school’s technologyÂ and business-incubation centre.

“We were means [to] bond with intensity attention partners and business who competence assistance allege a record to a margin trial, and ultimately, a full scale solution,” pronounced Stace Wills, vice-president of appetite during Innovate Calgary.

By November, a entirely programmed technologyÂ will be producing barrels of a little balls, a propagandize says.

Over a subsequent year we’ll afterwards scale that adult to a several-hundred-barrel per day unit,” Gates said.

He says there are several companies meddlesome in relocating a newly law invention forward.

Once a pellets are transported, they can be reconstituted behind to bitumen â€” by re-mixing them with a light oil that is constructed as a side product of a strange routine â€” and thenÂ upgraded in a unchanging way.

“So you’d have to ride a light oil with a solids if we wish to reconstruct a complicated oil,” Gates said.

Or, a pelletsÂ can be used as they are.

The balls are an ideal feed batch forÂ road paving, but a need to ascent a product anyÂ further, Gates says.

“In that case, all we do is sell a plain to those markets,” he said.

With files from a Calgary Eyeopener