[Graeme]

Does anyone know anything about Orimulsion as a potential energy source worldwide?

http://www.worldenergy.org/wec-geis/pub ... 2_1_06.asp

[ArimoDave]

It looks like (to me) what they are doing is taking oil in a form which is not readily usable, because it is too thick,
and adding detergent and water to make small droplets which flow like a less viscous fluid. These droplets can then be burned.

As an energy source, I think this is a misnomer. The source is the oil. This is just one technology that may allow us to
burn and use oil that formerly was unusable this way.

Anyone who understands this better than I do, please clarify and correct me if I am wrong.

ArimoDave

edit Grammar

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Graeme', 'D')oes anyone know anything about Orimulsion as a potential energy source worldwide?

http://www.worldenergy.org/wec-geis/pub ... 2_1_06.asp

[128shot]

Why don't we switch over to this, yet another fossil fule (makes me cringe too), untill we develop renews?


A bit about it


$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')Orimulsion® is an innovative fossil fuel that was developed in the late 1980s from the vast reserves of bitumen (a heavy hydrocarbon) in the Orinoco Belt of east-central Venezuela. Its primary purpose is as a boiler fuel for electric power generation.

Orimulsion® has been used commercially since 1991, and is now being consumed in Denmark, Italy, Germany, Canada, Japan and China. New contracts have been developed with customers in Italy, Singapore, South Korea and China. The current production capacity of 6.5 million tonnes per year is being expanded to supply this increased demand.

Orimulsion® is shipped from the Caribbean coast of Venezuela by ocean vessel to these worldwide customers. The primary new market for the fuel in the power generation sector is a group of existing power plants that possess certain key attributes. These attributes include the following:

*
Boiler-type power plants located on or near a deep water port where Orimulsion® can be directly offloaded from ocean vessels to power plant fuel storage facilities. These plant sites must also have sufficient space for new air quality control equipment to be installed as part of the conversion.
*
These plants should have high fuel costs and consequently low utilization, so they can benefit from the economics of conversion to Orimulsion®. As a result, the plants become efficient, low cost, base load generators with high utilization, while meeting strict environmental standards.
*
These plants should be large capacity generators in good condition in order to justify the capital expense required for the conversion.
*
The converted plant must be able to compete for base-load generation in their regional power pool. Consequently, an otherwise ideal plant located in a power pool with an oversupply of low-cost base-load power would not be a good candidate.
*
Finally, the plant’s ownership must be oriented toward improved environmental and financial performance, and have the willingness to undertake the project.
*
While there is interest in “greenfield” projects on the part of some power plant owners, the above profile of a conversion candidate plant represents the primary market for Orimulsion®.

[Dezakin]

Yuck.

We can allready do nuclear power far cleaner than this, and it looks like this only competes with nuclear and coal, and requires new infrastructure for it. If we're reving our infrastructure we should be using new nuclear rather than this crap. Otherwise its wasting a good chemical feedstock for synthetic fuels.

Given that coal is cheap and oil is dear it would seem to make far more sense to build refineries that can handle bitumen rather than special power stations to do it.

[128shot]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dezakin', 'Y')uck. We can allready do nuclear power far cleaner than this, and it looks like this only competes with nuclear and coal, and requires new infrastructure for it. If we're reving our infrastructure we should be using new nuclear rather than this crap. Otherwise its wasting a good chemical feedstock for synthetic fuels.
Given that coal is cheap and oil is dear it would seem to make far more sense to build refineries that can handle bitumen rather than special power stations to do it.

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('128shot', 'W')hy don't we switch over to this, yet another fossil fule (makes me cringe too), untill we develop renews?



http://www.gnb.ca/cnb/promos/NB-Power/Orimulsion-e.asp

[128shot]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('128shot', 'W')hy don't we switch over to this, yet another fossil fule (makes me cringe too), untill we develop renews? link

[Bleep]

Orimulsion is dying:$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')url=http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=68976]ORIMULSION: Concentrating on blending and upgrading makes financial sense (link)[/url]

... Orimulsion is an emulsion of 70% bitumen -- more about this later on -- and 30% water which can be burned in power plants.

... The product had its teething problems ... the emulsion was unstable and difficult to keep on spec and, when burned, it emitted ash into the atmosphere ... but these were solved and the product has been successful.

... But the government was determined to improve the income from the Orinoco Belt and ten years later encouraged a new development with the formation of four consortia to produce extra-heavy crude in the Orinoco Belt and upgrade it into a more commercially attractive product.

... when oil prices took off a couple of years ago, tripling the price of upgraded crudes and leaving the price of Orimulsion, tied to the price of coal, far behind. The government then decided they would accept no new clients for Orimulsion, ceased its production themselves, and let Sinovensa (a joint venture with a Chinese company) meet all present and future demand.

The government has now stated Sinovensa will stop producing Orimulsion and instead will blend extra-heavy oil with light oil to produce a crude of some 16º API until such time as upgrading facilities are available. The government has been caught unprepared with insufficient upgrading plants, and this bottle neck is likely to last some time since these plants are like large refineries, cost billions of dollars and take years to construct.

[Aaron]

Nuthin' you can't spell will ever work.

- Will Rogers

[MD]

People will be digging this sludge out of the ground for centuries to come.

In an energy scarce world there will be plenty of slaves available, and plenty of fat tyrants to use them up.

[Tanada]

I was pointed to a subject I knew nothing about a couple of days ago, CWF aka Coal Water Fuel. You take coal of any grade and grind it as fine as flour or powdered sugar, then you mix it with water into an emulsion that resembles dirty motor oil in color and consistency. With only minor modification the resulting mixture can be burned in Diesel engines in place of regular diesel #2 fuel when the engine is a low speed design, and it can be used as a co-fuel in medium speed diesel engines where the beginning of the fuel injection is #2 diesel fuel to act as a pilot ignition source for the CWF. The low speed diesel application is for ocean going Motor Vessels and for peaking plant Diesel electric generator modules of 10 to 100 MWe. The medium speed diesel application studied was for locomotive engines. The reason Orimulsion come into this is simple, researchers in both the USSR and USA developed CWF as a liquid boiler fuel to supplement or replace heavy oil and a great deal of research and development was done for that application in the late 1970's and early 1980's. Orimulsion was invented by the Venezuelan oil industry as a competitor for CWF in large baseload electric powerplant boiler fuel applications. For political reasons Venezuela has been attempting to phase out Orimulsion production, mostly by letting contracts expire and not renewing them. In the late 1990's Orimulsion was being actively promoted and was gaining market share by displacing heavy oil aka Diesel #6 aka Bunker C as boiler fuel at electric powerplants in Europe, Canada and East Asia.

Because of the way the process for making CWF works the resulting fuel can have as little as 2% ash content after burning, which is a huge improvement over traditional coal combustion methods. This extremely low ash content has even allowed for successful testing of CWF for use in CCGT aka Combined Cycle Gas Turbine powerplants which currently usually run on Natural Gas with Diesel #1 as a backup in case of interruption in the Natural Gas supply. It turns out that after extensive testing using CWF in a low speed diesel for peaking power is almost exactly as thermally efficient as using Natural Gas in a CCGT used for baseload power production. The carbon emissions are still much greater for CWF but the fuel costs are much lower than using Natural Gas or regular Diesel fuel when used for electricity production. If Carbon Emissions are not a concern there is no reason CWF can not substitute for Diesel Fuel in heavy equipment used to mine coal and in the locomotive engines used to transport that coal, and in places with abundant water CWF can be transported via pipeline in the same manner as raw petroleum is today. Much like Orimulsion in the 1990's CWF can be used as boiler fuel in powerplants that today burn heavy oil, and with burner replacement it can be used in powerplants that today use pulverized Coal as boiler fuel. Making this conversions won't make Coal a clean fuel, however it will greatly reduce the ash left over from combustion. The process also can also be adjusted to reduce the Sulfur in the fuel substantially. Given that one of the test applications for this fuel is in CCGT powerplants and that several coal fired CCGT powerplants were recently being built to demonstrate "clean coal technology" under the Bush administration and given that CWF is much cheaper and more energy efficient that Coal gasification I have a hunch that unless serious carbon taxes are imposed CWF is about to make a big entry into the electric market. Also given the fact that it is substantially cheaper to produce than Diesel fuel I believe it is highly likely that international ship companies will adopt it as fuel for their low speed marine diesels, which will substantially cut the cost of international shipping. As far as I have been able to tell from my research the emissions from ship engines are the jurisdiction of the country the vessel is registered in, and somehow I doubt Liberia is going to care one way or the other how much CO2 ships bearing their flag emit.

For more information of the extensive testing of CWF and its similarities to Orimulsion please read CWF pdf

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')n the early 1980s Intevep, the research affiliate of the state oil company PDVSA, developed a method of utilising some of the hitherto untouched potential of Venezuela's extra-heavy oil resource. The extra-heavy oil (7.5-8.5º gravity API) was extracted from the reservoir and emulsified with water (70% natural bitumen, 30% water, <1% surfactants). The resulting product was called Orimulsion®. Initial tests were conducted in Japan, Canada and the United Kingdom, and exports began in 1988. Bitúmenes del Orinoco S.A. (Bitor), a PDVSA subsidiary, operated a plant at Morichal in Cerro Negro with a capacity of 5.2 million tonnes per year. In 2005 PDVSA announced it would cease Orimulsion® production because it was more profitable to sell the extracted oil as feedstock to extra-heavy oil upgraders. In 2006, PDVSA and CNPC (Chinese National Oil Company) initiated the Sinovensa project, to supply two power plants in China and to meet some of PDVSA's commitments to supply Orimulsion®. However, in September 2006 the Minister of Energy and Petroleum announced that the Sinovensa operation would cease production at the end of the year.

[Subjectivist]

Orimulsion seems like a water version of Dilbit? If so why don't the Alberta tar sands folks make Orimulsion instead? It isn't like there is a water shortage in Alberta they have to worry about, and it has to be a lot cheaper than using condensates as dilutent?

[ROCKMAN]

Sub - Because the dilbit and orimulsion have vastly different utility. Dilbit is refined (after additional blending) into the products we all have come to love. LOL. Orimulsion is made by mixing the bitumen with about 30% fresh water and a small amount of surfactant. The result behaves similarly to fuel oil. And it was primarily used as a commercial boiler fuel in power plants worldwide and not as feed stock for refineries. In fact it was the import of dilbit into the US that was partially responsible for the pain in Venezuela: the fuel oil type fraction that cracked out of dilbit in Texas refineries was something of a low value component that put price competition on orimulsion.

[sparky]

.
The story of Orimulsion is linked to the Venezuelan government efforts to merchandise his huge reserves of extra heavy crude .
it has been inconclusive ,
the best which could be said is that it offer a viable path for the transport of the XH crude from the deposit to the coast by pipeline , it even offer some scrubbing of the Ghastly stuff if the water is then separated
as a fuel , the water content lower the energy density making it only suitable for a substitute for bunker oil grades
its production is influenced by the world oil market price
when prices are low , nobody want it much , when the prices are high , it is more profitable to blend the crude

[Tanada]

Not to dispute what you fellah's posted, but there are a whole class of large Diesels originally used for marine propulsion that have been tested burning Orimulsion instead of Diesel #4, which is their standard fuel. These large diesels are used for peaking electric plants and for large ship propulsion and are more efficient than just using the Orimulsion as bunker fuel in a steam plant.

Orimulsion isn't the be all end all of future Venezuala wealth, but it has a much greater utility, especially in the tropics, than the past use as strictly bunker fuel would lead one to conclude.

[ROCKMAN]

T - "but it has a much greater utility, especially in the tropics, than the past use". Would you care to list some of that utility beyond what sparky identified above?

I can offer one but not for orimulsion. One of the reasons Venezuela has been loosing revenue is the breakdown of a number of their "upgraders". That infrastructure allow the value of the bitumin to be increased. The details are never released but a year or so ago there was a hint that the country might be experimenting with shifting from orimulsion to dilbit. The imported light oil from Libya presumingly to blend with its ultra heavy crud. Not sure if it was to allow more valuable internal upgrading or for export to foreign refineries for them to process. Given I've nothing about China or anyone else investing in their upgrades. In fact I'm suspicious that China might have financed the Lybian condensate purchase to allow more imports to satisfy its trade deals with the country.

As the Rockman has pointed out: before the Eagle Ford boom Texas refineries were importing condensate to blend with heavy oils.

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('128shot', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('128shot', 'W')hy don't we switch over to this, yet another fossil fule (makes me cringe too), untill we develop renews? link

[ROCKMAN]

Outcast - "Now, if we were rational, we'd at least seriously attempt to charge for all the negative external social costs of using all pollutants. Fossil fuels being a prime example.". Aren't a large number of the primary polluters (the fossil fuel consumers) already paying those external costs? The military's fossil fuel consumption is funded by tax paying public. And motorist already pay taxes at the pump on the GHG they produce.

Folks can chase their tails all they want with various inapplicable ideas. But at the end of the if the DIRECT PRODUCERS, the fossil fuel consuming PUBLIC isn't burdened financially directly then there's no dynamic that will work. And that will depend on the politicians inflicting that cvcvost on to the public. The public they constant seek approval from for the sake of their reelection.

And some folks still don't understand why the change isn't happening any faster.