Around 50 years after the NET fertiliser factory in Arklow using the Shell process, SHELL is the largest Hydrocracker operator in the world. One can see from the : Process Animation Athabasca Oil Sands VIDEO: that
SHELL uses the Hydrocracking process instead of using large Cokers
The video describes before the Oil sands in Alberta, Canada can be mined the layers of soil and Overburden are cleared away and stored for later reclamation use ,Giant shovels measuring seven storeys each with a large bucket digs up to 100 metric tonnes of oil sands ore and drops it in to gigantic 400 ton dump trucks that carry enough bitumen to make about two hundred barrels of oil and can make 30 to 50 trips each shift. The trucks dump the oil sands into two massive primary crushers , inside the crushers huge steel teeth breakup and grind the large chunks of ore down to about 16 inches or 45 cm each double row of crusher can process 14,000 tonnes of oil sands ore per hour, the ore is then carried along the world’s largest capacity conveyor belt to a storage silo, there ore is fed up three conveyors to the rotary drum breakers where warm water is added and the rotating drums agitated vigorously creating a mixture called slurry . The slurry is then moved through a two kilometre long pipeline to the extraction plant, a process known as hydro transport , the slurry sloshes along inside the pipeline and the movement further agitates the bitumen beginning the separation process, after hydro transport the slurry enters the primary separation cell , the first stage of bitumen extraction, the cells stand out as large cones against the backdrop of the buildings and pipe racks of the plant. When the slurry enters the separation cells water is added to help separate out the bitumen. In the cell the bitumen floats to the top of the vessel , the sand sinks to the bottom, and a combination of mostly water mixed with sand, bitumen and clay sits in the middle, and these are known as middling’s, which are treated again to recover more bitumen. The product from extraction is known as froth and typically consists of 60% bitumen, 30% water and 10% solids. In the froth treatment plant the froth is mixed with a paraffinic solvent that reduces viscosity and precipitates asphaltenes. The result is a water and solids free bitumen clean enough to be upgraded using hydrogen addition technology. This mixture of bitumen and paraffinic solvent or diluent is called dilbit the dilbit is shipped 493 kilometres South to the Scotford upgrader through the corridor pipeline, light oils that are part of the bitumen received from the mine are first separated including the diluent that is used to transport the bitumen to the upgrader. The remaining residue a tar like fluid from the bitumen is upgraded by applying heat, hydrogen and pressure to break the large carbon chains that make up a bitumen molecule. Upgrading methods create lighter hydrocarbon molecules by either removing carbon or adding hydrogen molecules to the long bitumen molecule chain. Shell uses the hydrogen addition process. In a vessel called a Hydrocracker, hydrogen is added to create smaller hydrocarbon molecules that are easier for Refineries to process. Most of the hydrogen used for hydrocracking is produced on site by a hydrogen manufacturing unit . The by-product created is then converted to pure sulphur in the sulphur recovery unit. The hydrogen addition process has some advantages over the traditional coking process used at other oil sand operations. Coking removes carbon creating a waste by-product. Shells method adds hydrogen to produce approximately 103 barrels of upgraded crude oil from every100 barrels of bitumen processed , this volume processing game is a significant advantage over coking, which delivers only 85 barrels per100 barrels processed. It’s a volume advantage of over 18%. Shell’s synthetic crude.