Greenhouse Gases
Quantification of Area Fugitive Emissions
COSIA’s GHG Environmental Priority Area Steering Committee is seeking transformative, cost-effective technologies to accurately and precisely quantify area fugitive greenhouse gas emissions from oil sands tailings ponds and mine faces.
Direct Hot Water Production for an Oil Sands Mining & Extraction Process
The COSIA Greenhouse Gas Environmental Priority Area has identified Direct Hot Water Production as a technology which could improve the environmental performance of mineable oil sands. New technology is sought which could replace conventional hot water production approaches, which use economizers or low grade steam, in either new or existing mining operations.
Higher Value Use of Low Grade Heat
COSIA’s GHG Environmental Priority Area Steering Committee is seeking technologies that create value from excess low grade heat resulting from Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) oil sands production and/or related surface facility operations.
Natural Gas Decarbonization
The COSIA GHG Environmental Priority Area (EPA) Steering Committee (SC) has identified natural gas decarbonization as an opportunity area in which to explore for technologies that will materially reduce oil sands GHG emissions. These technologies will partially or completely remove the carbon content of natural gas. The emissions associated with producing the decarbonized gas, plus the emissions from combusting the decarbonized gas, will be less than the emissions from combusting natural gas.
Water and Energy Recovery from Flue Gas
The COSIA GHG Environmental Priority Area Steering Committee is seeking leading edge technologies that capture water vapour and waste heat from flue gas from natural gas combustion. The successful technology will provide valuable high grade heat to be integrated into the processing facility and produce clean water as condensate that can be used for steam production. Ideally the technology could be retrofitted to existing combustion equipment.
New Heat Exchanger Technology
COSIA’s GHG Environmental Priority Area Steering Committee is seeking technology which could replace heat exchanger technology in either new or existing thermal in situ operations.
Energy from Pressure Letdown
The COSIA Greenhouse Gas Environmental Priority Area Steering Committee has identified Energy from Pressure Letdown as a technology area which could improve the environmental performance of the oil sands. COSIA seeks a new technology which could capture energy, likely power, at a small scale (e.g. 500 KW – 3 MW) when delivering high or medium pressure energy source through pressure let downs.
Post Combustion Capture Processes
Activities in this opportunity will increase understanding of how to dramatically reduce the cost of capture, especially CAPEX, from diluted CO2 streams (<8 vol%), and how the most advanced and emerging Post Combustion Capture (PCC) technologies and processes can be economically applied to current oil sands production. Also of interest is the identification and development of promising early technology readiness level (TRL) processes and technologies for CO2 capture at a significantly lower cost (OPEX and CAPEX).
Oxy-fuel Combustion
Activities to close this gap will focus on decreasing the costs of oxygen enrichment technologies and improving their integration with oil sands facilities. Material energy efficiency improvements will also be targeted and could be achieved through lower energy intensity oxygen (O2) production.
Finding steam additives for SAGD performance improvement
COSIA’s members have identified ‘de-risking steam additives for SAGD performance improvement research priority’, which if realized, would help reduce the amount of steam needed per barrel produced.
Electromagnetic Simulation Tools
COSIA’s members have identified ‘Electromagnetic (EM) Simulation Tools innovation priority’, which if realized, would help accelerate adoption of EM reservoir heating and dramatically reduce the amount of water needed and emissions per barrel of oil produced.
