Use of N115 Carbon Nano-Fluid for Solar Powered Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage for Extracting Bitumen

Abstract

Showing concern for the high emission of green house gases, the governments all over the world are coming up with more stringent rules to check the emission level. Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage is a highly energy intensive process where huge amount of steam is generated by heating natural gas or coal thereby generating a very large share of green house gases. Therefore, solar energy seems to be lucrative in the following ways: world areas with abundant solar irradiation level can be tapped to reduce the fossil fuel consumption, minimizing the cost spent on fossil fuel and the emissions level at the same time. Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) looks a very promising technique but it comes with its own limitations mainly due to the requirement for huge area for setting up the solar collectors. Water Soluble Carbon-N115 is a sub-micrometer particle that has size less than the wavelength of light. Due to this reason, instead of scattering light, it absorbs light. The nano-particle gets enveloped in a thin layer of steam when put in a water bath. The vapour is released after reaching liquid-air interface and the nano-particles revert back to the solution to repeat the vaporization process and they exchange heat with the fluid, slightly raising the fluid temperature resulting in boiling of the fluid volume as a parallel effect. The paper discusses a model incorporating this nano-particle for the reduction of solar field footprint by more than a quarter and thereby reducing the cost and operational area. The paper also suggests the places across the globe where the proposed method can be deployed for generating steam and ultimately injecting it for producing oil above the surface from a tar-sand reservoir.