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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Canuck Dave who wrote (34816)	6/8/2003 8:01:59 PM
From: Cogito Ergo Sum	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Don't recall a fixed number. Refining and recovery techniques are improving but I think it still depends still upon NG price. They need fuel for the process. A nuke plant would solve the problem I imagine ;O) If tar sand is heated to about 80 °C, by injecting steam into the deposit in a manner analogous to that of enhanced oil recovery, the elevated temperature causes a decrease in the viscosity of the bitumen just enough to allow its pumping to the surface. Alternatively, it is sometimes easier to mine the tar sand as a solid material. When the mined tar sand is mixed with steam and hot water, the bitumen will float on the water while the sand sinks to the bottom of the container, allowing for easy separation. Heating the bitumen above 500 °C converts about 70% of it to a synthetic crude oil. Distilling this oil gives good yields of kerosene and other liquid products in the middle distillate range. The remainder of the bitumen either thermally cracks to form gaseous products or reacts to form petroleum coke. ? Note if they run out of a relatively cheap energy ... then what do they do ? Also makes me wonder if some of the 'conservation' story is more concerned with ensuring a steady energy supply to recover the bitumen in the future ;o) regards Kastel EDIT That cut comes from a document a few years old but the energy input is still pretty high nonetheless..