Heavy oil transportation: can it be made easier by magnetism?

Introduction Since heavy crude oil transport is energy intensive and capital intensive, it is in a competitive situation. Due to the low API specific gravity (20 ° to 10 °) and the high viscosity (200 to 10 000 CP), the flow of oil through the pipe is very difficult. According to Chevron-Phillips, the weight of crude oil is due to the low proportion of high molecular weight nonparaffinic compounds and paraffin. The geological origin of heavy crude is at shallow depth and is the result of improper degradation of kerogen by temperature gradient.

Extra heavy or crude bitumen extracted from the oil sands is a very viscous semisolid oil and does not flow easily at ambient temperature and therefore it is difficult to transport to the market in pipelines. To flow through the oil pipeline, you need to upgrade to a lighter synthetic crude (SCO), or mix with a diluent to form a diluent or to lower the viscosity. In Canadian oil sands, the bitumen produced by open pit mini is usually upgraded on site and supplied as synthetic crude oil. This makes it very easy to transport oil to the market through traditional oil pipelines. Meanwhile, the bitumen produced in the field project is not normally upgraded and will be put into the market in its original form. If the medicine used to upgrade the bitumen to synthetic crude is not produced in the field, it must be supplied and shipped to the upgrade site from other places.

For the benefit of petroleum distributors, in 2004 the western Canadian producer created a new benchmark crude called Western Canada Select (WCS). The state of Mexican Maya is similar, or Venezuela heavy crude. The API gravity of this heavy oil is 19 to 21, which contains a large amount of bitumen and synthetic crude oil but still flows through the pipeline and is classified as "traditional heavy oil" by the government. This mixture is imported into hundreds of thousands of barrels per day in addition to large amounts of crude oil bitumen and synthetic oil (SCO) from oil sands.

Introduction Since heavy crude oil transport is energy intensive and capital intensive, it is in a competitive situation. Due to the low API specific gravity (20 ° to 10 °) and the high viscosity (200 to 10 000 CP), the flow of oil through the pipe is very difficult. According to Chevron-Phillips, the weight of crude oil is high due to the high molecular weight nonparaffin compounds and the low proportion of paraffin.