Title: Clean Hydrogen Production (Only!) From Heavy Oil Reservoirs.

Abstract: The oil sands deposits in Western Canada not only represent a vast store of hydrocarbons (oil)
that can be converted into fuel and petrochemicals but also a vast hydrogen store – a super clean valuable
energy vector and chemical feedstock. With the need to find new energy recovery processes for oil sands
reservoirs that have low energy and emissions intensities, hydrogen production is a viable alternative for
energy production from heavy oil and oil sands reservoirs by using in situ gasification technology.
Gasification reactions, together with the water-gas shift reaction, enable the generation of hydrogen from
both bitumen and water within the oil sands reservoir. With hydrogen separation membranes in the
production wells, other products from the reactions remain in the reservoir. Thus, there is potential for
hydrogen production processes from oil sands reservoirs. The research documented here describes an
optimized design for an in-situ gasification of bitumen process for surface production of hydrogen only as
well as an operating design for application in a heavy oil reservoir located in Saskatchewan, Canada.

expert reaction to conference

abstract looking at extracting
hydrogen from oil sands
An abstract, being presented at the Goldschmidt geochemistry
conference, reports that Scientists have developed a method for extracting
hydrogen gas from oil sands and oil fields.

Dr Shaun Fitzgerald, Director, The Royal Institution, said:

“There’s a simple way to confirm the claims – have the authors lay out the
chemical equations and the associated energy inputs/outputs. At the moment
the words say “inject O2 and get H2 out with no other products”. Clearly this
is not the whole story as there are other inputs (namely the oil) and other
products which remain in the ground. I don’t know why the authors have
omitted to share the chemical reaction process in the briefing when they have
already filed a patent.”

Dr Jeremy Tomkinson, Company Director and CEO, Lead Consultant

Traditional and Advanced Biofuels, NNFCC The Bioeconomy Consultants,
said:
“Making hydrogen from hydrocarbons using oxygen is nothing new – the trick
is not releasing the CO2 to the atmosphere. It would be really exciting if they
had found a way of carbonating it in situ i.e. producing hydrogen and turning
the residual carbon into CO3 to make carbonate rocks, if not, how are they
ensuring the carbonaceous gases remain locked underground – letting them
go to atmosphere would result in no difference to burning the oil above
ground at far less energy burden.”

Miles Seaman, Member of Energy Centre Board, Institution of Chemical

Engineers, said:

“The growing importance of hydrogen as a major energy vector in the context

of delivering zero carbon energy means that the technology described by
Proton Energy is relevant. However the broad idea of underground
gasification has been explored previously and has identified various
difficulties in implementing it for fossil fuel reservoirs generally. The use of
oxygen (i.e. oxy-gassification) is not new. However the overall concept will
require the successful development of several components (e.g. management
of gasification in the reservoir, sub surface separation of
hydrogen). Notwithstanding these and other technical issues the concept
could prove to be a significant source of zero carbon energy.”

Dr Peter Clough, Lecturer in Energy Engineering, Cranfield University, said:

“Oil sands are renowned for being one of the most environmentally damaging
and controversial sources of fossil fuels, however this technology offers a
potential alternative via deep mining of the oil sands, thereby avoiding a lot of
the environmental impacts that arise from surface mining of oil sands.

“My main concern for this technology is the amount of oxygen that is required
for injection into the well and whether the economics still work in their favour
if the oxygen is sourced from an air separation unit, which will increase the
cost of hydrogen production significantly (air separation units are the most
common and large scale commercial available method of separating oxygen
from air).”

Prof Geoffrey Maitland, Professor of Energy Engineering, Imperial College

London, said:

“For many years engineers have been looking at the possibilities of sub-surface
processing of heavy hydrocarbons and using the reservoir as a reactor to
convert these generally low-grade and solid-like oils, which are very expensive
to recover in their own right, into higher value products. One route is to
convert a tar sand reservoir into a gas (either methane or hydrogen) reservoir
and many investigations into in situ combustion and hydrocarbon catalytic
conversion have been carried out over the years. The injection of oxygen
suggest that this new process involves such in situ combustion and
hydrocarbon oxidation processes.

“A key challenge to overcome is to separate the high value products, in this

case hydrogen, from the other reaction products, particularly CO2 and other
gaseous components such as methane, from the hydrogen is such a way that
the greenhouse gases and impurities are either kept underground or captured
at the surface and either re-injected into the reservoir or useable as by-
products. A second challenge is to carry out the underground extraction
process at a viable cost and with minimal external energy requirements which
would themselves generate CO2 emissions. One technology that has been
considered to give high quality, low cost product separation is selective gas
membranes. These could be deployed in the reservoir, in the wellbores
transporting the product gases to the surface or at the surface itself on the
production rig. The use of the term ‘filters’ suggests that this is the technology
being deployed here by the University of Calgary and Proton Technologies Inc.

“If the claims of this press release and the associated abstract/conference
presentation are valid, then a low-cost high purity hydrogen generation
process like this could have a major impact on exploiting heavy oil and tar
sand reserves in an economic way in the future. Indeed such a process could
equally be applied to conventional oil reservoirs to generate hydrogen,
particularly to extract value from depleted oil and gas reservoirs where further
recovery of the hydrocarbon as oil is uneconomic and the environmental
pressures to use less oil increase. The market for hydrogen will undoubtedly
increase dramatically over coming decades as it is seen as a major route to
decarbonising heating as well as a fuel for decarbonised transport (directly or
via fuel cells) and for clean electricity generation using hydrogen gas
turbines. To assess its viability more information will be required about the
details of the product separation process, the ways in which the underground
combustion/oxidation process can be controlled within the oil sand reservoir
and the plans for scaling the process up from any exploratory laboratory and
pilot scale studies to the actual reservoir scale. A thorough evaluation of the
cradle-to-grave costs and emissions of the full process will also be required.”
Abstract title: ‘Clean hydrogen production (only!) from heavy oil
reservoirs’ by Ian Gates et al.

This is a conference abstract from the Goldschmidt geochemistry

conference, and was under embargo until 23:05 UK time on Monday 19
August 2019.

There is no paper as this is not published work.

Declared interests

Dr Peter Clough: “I have no interests to declare.”

Miles Seaman: “I have no interests in this technology.”

Prof Geoffrey Maitland: “I am Director of the Shell Digital Rocks programme

at Imperial, which is fully sponsored by Shell and have previously managed
research programmes on Carbon Storage directly funded by fossil fuel
companies – principally Shell and Qatar Petroleum. Although I have done
research on the feasibility of underground hydrocarbon processing, none of
this has been funded by oil and gas companies.”

None others received.