Canada's oil industry is a growing energy source, with proven reserves exceeding 174 billion barrels. The majority of the production is attributable to oil sands. Thermal bitumen extraction is the predominant production method, and is poised to grow at an annual rate of 23% to 2025. This has important long-term GHG emissions implications. To date, CO2 emissions mitigation efforts have overwhelmingly focused on implementing CCS in bitumen upgrading operations, rather than in thermal bitumen extraction processes. The paper covers the application of CO2 capture to the main thermal bitumen extraction process: SAGD (Steam-assisted gravity drainage).

The paper presents four SAGD-oxy-fuel integration configurations and compares their techno-economics to a SAGD process featuring natural gas-fired co-generation without CO2 capture (reference case). Configuration one is a natural-gas fired co-generation boiler retrofitted for oxy-fuel operation. Configuration two is an oxy-fuel fluidized boiler using bitumen as fuel. The third configuration features a natural gas oxy-fuel boiler integrated with a cryogenic Air Separation Unit (ASU). The pressurized “waste” N2 is expanded in a turbine with additional heat integration. The fourth configuration features natural gas oxy-combustion with O2 from an Oxygen Transport Membrane (OTM) unit. Other integration concepts, including Chemical Looping combustion (CLC) are introduced. Because these concepts are in an earlier stage of development, the discussion covers their qualitative aspects and potential benefits over the previously mentioned cases.