Patent Application
20240400905
The present disclosure pertains to the technical field of recycling of plastic wastes. In particular, the present disclosure provides an integration of a plastic recycling process into plants that produce extra heavy oil, especially plants producing oil from oil sands. Also, the overall process is environment friendly, energy efficient and economical.
Background description includes information that may be useful in understanding the present invention. It is not an admission that any of the information provided herein is prior art or relevant to the presently claimed invention, or that any publication specifically or implicitly referenced is prior art.
Oil recovery from the vast oil sands reserves in Canada are done by two main processes known as strip mining and thermal in situ technologies such as cyclic steam stimulation (CSS) and steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD).
Strip mining is possible for deposits located near the surface. The ore is crushed and the bitumen is separated by flotation. Most mine sites include an upgrader which performs a coking process to improve the viscosity and refinability of the mined bitumen. In Situ methods are an energy intensive process that relies on large quantities of water to generate steam that is injected underground to heat the bitumen in the reservoir until it's mobile enough to flow toward production wells. This process generates large quantities of produced water and saleable oil.
Since most of the oil from Alberta's oil sands is buried too deep for mining processes, the In Situ technologies have become the main methods used for enhanced oil recovery with numerous plants/facilities in Alberta & Saskatchewan. The steam assisted gravity drainage technique (SAGD) and the cyclic steam stimulation technique (CSS) both use steam to stimulate the production of bitumen from the oil sands deposits of Alberta, Canada. Oil sands facilities require valuable process streams that are mixed with the extracted crude bitumen before it is sent for further processing.
Further, considering the need to recover and recycle waste plastics, concerns about environmental issues are growing rapidly. Currently there is a poor market in Canada for plastic waste and much of the collected waste by municipalities is being stockpiled. Turning a mounting plastic waste stream into usable oil would solve a massive problem with plastic waste.
Thus, there is an unmet need in the art to use plastic recycling to provide valuable process streams to oil sands facilities that would be beneficial environmentally and would provide a value-added recycle path for plastic waste.
An objective of the present disclosure is to provide an integration of a plastic recycling process into plants that produce extra heavy oil especially plants producing oil from oil sands.
Another object of the present disclosure is to provide a process for providing hydrocarbon streams to an oil sands processing facility from plastics pyrolysis.
Another object of the present disclosure is to improve the operating cost of both the plastic recycling and the oil sands extraction processes while taking advantage of the synergies with the output from these two processes.
Another objective of the present disclosure is to provide an overall process that is environment friendly, energy efficient and economical.
The present disclosure pertains to the technical field of recycling of plastic wastes. In particular, the present disclosure relates to integration of a plastic recycling process into plants that produce extra heavy oil, especially plants producing oil from oil sands. Also, the overall process is environment friendly, energy efficient and economical.
In an aspect, the present disclosure provides a process for providing hydrocarbon streams to an oil sands processing facility from plastics pyrolysis, wherein, the plastic pyrolysis is performed in a plant integrated into the oil sands processing facility.
Accordingly, the present disclosure provides an integration of plastic recycling and oil extraction processes comprises of providing hydrocarbon streams to an oil sands processing facility from plastics pyrolysis.
In another aspect of the present disclosure, the oil sands processing facility is the central processing facility (CPF) of a SAGD plant, CSS plant or an upgrader.
In another aspect of the present disclosure, the integrated plastic pyrolysis plant provides one or more useful and/or valuable hydrocarbon streams to the oil sands processing facility.
In another aspect of the present disclosure, the hydrocarbon stream is selected from diluent, synthetic crude oil, trim solvents such as butane or fuel gases, or a combination thereof.
In another aspect of the present disclosure, the plastic feedstock for pyrolysis is selected from post-consumer use or industrial waste such as municipal, construction, manufacturing or agricultural waste.
In another aspect of the present disclosure, the integration of the plastic pyrolysis process into the oil sands processing facility involves sharing streams such as natural gas and other gaseous fuels between the plastics pyrolysis process and the oil production facility.
In another aspect of the present disclosure, the integration of the plastic pyrolysis process into the oil production facility involves sharing utilities such as electric power, steam and cooling fluids.
In another aspect of the present disclosure the integration of the plastic pyrolysis process into the oil production facility involves sharing safety systems such as leak detection and fire suppression.
In another aspect of the present disclosure, the plastic pyrolysis plant design, operating conditions and feedstock choice is optimized to provide the optimal blend of output products for the oil sands processing facility.
In another aspect of the present disclosure, the output products include diluent, synthetic oil, trim solvents such as butane and fuel gases.
In another aspect of the present disclosure, the plastic pyrolysis plant design is modularly expandable.
Various objects, features, aspects and advantages of the inventive subject matter will become more apparent from the following detailed description of preferred embodiments.
The accompanying drawings are included to provide a further understanding of the present disclosure, and are incorporated in and constitute a part of this specification. The drawings illustrate exemplary embodiments of the present disclosure and, together with the description, serve to explain the principles of the present disclosure.
The sole figure illustrates an exemplary schematic of a process for providing hydrocarbon streams produced from plastics pyrolysis, wherein the plastic pyrolysis is performed in a plant integrated into the oil sands processing facility, realized in accordance with an embodiment of the present disclosure.
The following is a full description of the disclosure's embodiments. The embodiments are described in such a way that the disclosure is clearly communicated. The level of detail provided, on the other hand, is not meant to limit the expected variations of embodiments; rather, it is designed to include all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives that come within the spirit and scope of the current disclosure as defined by the attached claims. Unless the context indicates otherwise, the term “comprise” and variants such as “comprises” and “comprising” throughout the specification are to be read in an open, inclusive meaning, that is, as “including, but not limited to.”
When “one embodiment” or “an embodiment” is used in this specification, it signifies that a particular feature, structure, or characteristic described in conjunction with the embodiment is present in at least one embodiment. As a result, the expressions “in one embodiment” and “in an embodiment” that appear throughout this specification do not necessarily refer to the same embodiment. Furthermore, in one or more embodiments, the specific features, structures, or qualities may be combined in any way that is appropriate.
Unless the content clearly demands otherwise, the singular terms “a,” “an,” and “the” include plural referents in this specification and the appended claims. Unless the content explicitly mandates differently, the term “or” is normally used in its broad definition, which includes “and/or.”
All processes described herein can be performed in any suitable order unless otherwise indicated herein or otherwise clearly contradicted by context. The use of any and all examples, or exemplary language (e.g. “such as”) provided with respect to certain embodiments herein is intended merely to better illuminate the invention and does not pose a limitation on the scope of the invention otherwise claimed. No language in the specification should be construed as indicating any non-claimed element essential to the practice of the invention.
The headings and abstract of the invention provided herein are for convenience only and do not interpret the scope or meaning of the embodiments.
All publications herein are incorporated by reference to the same extent as if each individual publication or patent application were specifically and individually indicated to be incorporated by reference. Where a definition or use of a term in an incorporated reference is inconsistent or contrary to the definition of that term provided herein, the definition of that term provided herein applies and the definition of that term in the reference does not apply.
Groupings of alternative elements or embodiments of the invention disclosed herein are not to be construed as limitations. Each group member can be referred to and claimed individually or in any combination with other members of the group or other elements found herein. One or more members of a group can be included in, or deleted from, a group for reasons of convenience and/or patentability. When any such inclusion or deletion occurs, the specification is herein deemed to contain the group as modified thus fulfilling the written description that follows, and the embodiments described herein, is provided by way of illustration of an example, or examples, of particular embodiments of the principles and aspects of the present disclosure. These examples are provided for the purposes of explanation, and not of limitation, of those principles and of the disclosure.
It should also be appreciated that the present invention can be implemented in numerous ways, including as a system, a method or a device. In this specification, these implementations, or any other form that the invention may take, may be referred to as processes. In general, the order of the steps of the disclosed processes may be altered within the scope of the invention.
Various terms as used herein are shown below. To the extent a term used in a claim is not defined below, it should be given the broadest definition persons in the pertinent art have given that term as reflected in printed publications and issued patents at the time of filing.
As used herein, the term “plastic waste” as used herein, throughout the present disclosure, denotes the waste material from domestic or commercial source, such as plastic waste materials from residential sites, plastic waste materials from industrial sites, and plastic waste materials from land-fill sites, virgin plastic and virgin plastic materials such as scrap generated either during synthesis of the plastics materials or during processing of the plastics materials into the desired article. The plastic waste may includes single plastic waste, for example, polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP) or may include combination/mixture of several plastic wastes such as a combination of any of: polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polychloroprene, nylon, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), polyacrylonitrile (PAN), and polyurethane (PU), but not limited thereto. The plastic waste may also include one or more halogen containing plastic materials such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC), polychloroprene and the like. The process of the present disclosure is amenable to a wide variety of plastic wastes without any significant restrictions as to the type or characteristics of the plastic waste that may be subjected to the instant process. The plastic waste may have 20-50% of Polyethylene (PE), 20-50% of polypropylene (PP), 5-30% of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and the rest being other types of plastics that are typically used for common household purposes.
As used herein, the term ‘Oil sands’ (also known as tar sands and bituminous sands) refers to a mixture of, primarily, bitumen, sand and water. Bitumen is heavy black viscous oil that is diluted with a lighter hydrocarbon or upgraded before it can be transported to a refinery to produce gasoline and diesel fuels. Oil sands recovery processes generally include extraction and separation systems to remove the bitumen from sand and water.
In a general embodiment, the present disclosure relates to an integration of a plastic recycling process into plants that produce extra heavy oil, especially plants producing oil from oil sands. Also, the overall process is environment friendly, energy efficient and economical.
In an embodiment, the present disclosure provides a process for providing hydrocarbon streams to an oil sands processing facility from plastics pyrolysis, wherein, the plastic pyrolysis is performed in a plant integrated into the oil sands processing facility.
In another embodiment of the present disclosure, the oil sands processing facility is the central processing facility (CPF) of a SAGD plant, CSS plant or an upgrader.
In another embodiment of the present disclosure, the integrated plastic pyrolysis plant provides one or more useful and/or valuable hydrocarbon streams to the oil sands processing facility. The hydrocarbon stream is selected from diluent, synthetic crude oil, trim solvents such as butane or fuel gases, or a combination thereof.
In another embodiment of the present disclosure, the lighter hydrocarbon steam is used to dilute the extracted crude bitumen reducing its viscosity for separation and transport. The plastic recycling process can produce a diluent stream directly on site for use in the oil sands recovery process. This stream could replace diluent currently transported to the oil sand production facilities by pipeline from refineries.
In another embodiment of the present disclosure, the plastics recycling process can also produce a heavier hydrocarbon stream that is similar to the synthetic crude oil produced by bitumen upgraders. For the plastics recycle facility sited at an upgrader, the synthetic crude oil produced from the plastics recycle could be added directly to the sales infrastructure that take the upgraded bitumen to market. At other facilities, the synthetic crude or heavier components from the plastics recycle process could be added to the sales infrastructure that takes diluted bitumen to market.
In another embodiment of the present disclosure, the plastic feedstock for pyrolysis is selected from post-consumer use or industrial waste such as municipal, construction, manufacturing or agricultural waste. Any necessary sorting, cleaning and grinding processes could be done either at separate plastics collection and processing facilities with the prepared feedstock shipped to the pyrolysis plant site or any needed processing facilities could also be collocated with the pyrolysis recycling plant.
In an embodiment of the present disclosure, an integration of plastic recycling and oil sands extraction processes using a SAGD plant comprises:
In another embodiment of the present disclosure, the CSS plant is nearly identical to the SAGD facility but the steam is injected into a single well bore for a period of time and then the oil is produced from the same well bore in a cyclic process of steaming and production.
In another embodiment of the present disclosure, the integration of the plastic pyrolysis process into the oil sands processing facility involves sharing streams such as natural gas and other gaseous fuels between the plastics pyrolysis process and the oil production facility. Further, the integration of the plastic pyrolysis process into the oil production facility involves sharing utilities such as electric power, steam and cooling fluids. Also, the integration requires engineering for heat integration, utility integration and process stream integration. Also the integration can involve control functions, and safety functions such as leak detection and fire suppression. Thus, improving the operating cost of both the plastic recycling & the oil sands extraction processes while taking advantage of the synergies with the output from these two processes.
In another embodiment of the present disclosure, the plastic pyrolysis plant design, operating conditions and feedstock choice is optimized to provide the optimal blend of output products for the oil sands processing facility. Also, the plastic pyrolysis plant design is modularly expandable. Further, the output products include diluent, synthetic oil, trim solvents such as butane and fuel gases.
In another embodiment of the present disclosure, the plastics recycling process benefits from sitting at a facility with important utilities like natural gas for startup but most importantly the sitting provides an immediately available outlet for the synthetic oil products created by the plastic recycling process.
In another embodiment of the present disclosure, the oil sands facility benefits since the plastics recycling process can produce a lighter hydrocarbon product immediately useful as a diluent for bitumen in the oil sands recovery process or the synthetic crude oil produced by the plastics recycle plant be added directly to diluted bitumen or synthetic crude oil sales infrastructure as a route to market.
In another embodiment of the present disclosure, the overall process would also be beneficial environmentally since shipment of diluent from refineries would be reduced, and new fossil production would be replaced by synthetic hydrocarbon streams from the plastic recycle process. The obvious additional benefit would be to provide a value-added recycle path for plastic waste.
While the foregoing describes various embodiments of the disclosure, other and further embodiments of the disclosure may be devised without departing from the basic scope thereof. The scope of the invention is determined by the claims that follow. The invention is not limited to the described embodiments, versions or examples, which are included to enable a person having ordinary skill in the art to make and use the invention when combined with information and knowledge available to the person having ordinary skill in the art.
The present invention is further explained in the form of the following examples. However, it is to be understood that the following examples are merely illustrative and are not to be taken as limitations upon the scope of the invention.
Waste plastic is cracked into low molecular weight (MW) hydrocarbons in an inert atmosphere at temperatures ranging from 200 to 500° C. with or without the presence of a catalyst. The temperature of the reaction will determine the composition of the final output, but generally comprises gaseous fractions consisting of C1 to C4 hydrocarbons and liquid fractions consisting of C5 to C25 components which could be further distilled into fractions of desired boiling point ranges.
The sole figure illustrates an integration of a waste-plastic-to-low-MW-hydrocarbons (WPLMH) facility into a SAGD facility with the preprocessing facility to clean, dry and shred the plastic waste can either be located within the SAGD facility or outside the facility. The equipment and reactors for feeding the input plastic, melting and cracking the plastic waste will be installed within the SAGD facility such that the outputs are integrated with the appropriate matching process and/or output streams of the SAGD facility.
One example is to collocate a plastic pyrolysis plant at a facility for bitumen upgrading. The upgraders are often associated with oil sand mines and upgrade the raw bitumen extracted from the ore to synthetic crude oil. The output of the plastics recycling facility would be optimized to produce a synthetic crude oil (heavy hydrocarbon) that could be added directly to the bitumen derived synthetic crude oil. Colocation of the plastics recycling plant at the upgrader directly takes advantage of the sales infrastructure for the bitumen derived synthetic crude oil including tanks and sales pipelines. This would also provide the advantage of good transportation access to upgrader sites for bringing in plastic waste to be recycled. The sites have full utilities such as electric power, steam, and natural gas that could be integrated into the plastics recycles operation. The control infrastructure and safety systems could also be integrated with substantial cost savings. Other byproducts from the plastic pyrolysis process such as coke/carbon could be integrated into similar streams produced as byproducts of bitumen upgrading.
Another example is to collocate the plastic recycling facility at a site that produces oil by SAGD, CSS or other thermal enhanced oil production techniques. These production facilities have central processing plants that separate the bitumen/water emulsion into a water stream that is reused and a bitumen stream for sale. In the separation process a light hydrocarbon stream such as refinery condensate is added to the bitumen water emulsion. The light hydrocarbon is called diluent since it dilutes the very heavy bitumen reducing its density and viscosity thus facilitating the separation process and subsequent sales pipeline or rail transport of the diluted bitumen. Very light hydrocarbon fractions such as butane are valuable additives to the final diluted bitumen product since they greatly reduce density and viscosity of the product in the sales pipeline. In this case the output of the plastics pyrolysis plant would be optimized to provide the lighter hydrocarbon streams that could be used as diluent in the bitumen/water separation process or as sales oil density/viscosity reduction additives. Once again the coalocation also takes advantage of integrating control systems, safety systems and utilities such as electricity and natural gas into pre-existing facilities at the oil production site.
The present disclosure provides an integration of a plastic recycling process into plants that produce extra heavy oil especially plants producing oil from oil sands.
The present disclosure provides an overall process to use plastic recycling to provide valuable process streams to oil sands processing facilities.
The present disclosure provides an integration improving the operating cost of both the plastic recycling & the oil sands extraction processes while taking advantage of the synergies with the output from these two processes.
The present disclosure provides an overall process that is environment friendly, energy efficient and economical.
The present application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 63/470,455 filed on Jun. 2, 2023, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 63470455 | Jun 2023 | US |
