HTL History & Development
The HTL process represents the application of a commercially-proven technology to a new feedstock. The technology initially was developed in the 1980s by a predecessor company of a private, Ottawa-based company called Ensyn Corporation. Ensyn has been applying its RTP technology (the biomass equivalent of HTL) on a commercial basis since 1989. Seven commercial Ensyn biomass processing facilities are in operation in the United States and Canada.In the late 1980s, Ensyn successfully demonstrated, on a bench scale, the ability to upgrade heavy-oil-grade petroleum with its technology. In 1998, having scaled up and commercialized the technology using biomass feedstocks, Ensyn returned to petroleum applications and built a 20-barrel-per-day petroleum pilot plant and successfully completed more than 90 test runs on various heavy-oil samples from around the world.
In late-2004, Ensyn commissioned the 1,000-barrel-per-day Commercial Demonstration Facility (CDF) in the Belridge heavy-oil field in Southern California. The purpose of the CDF was to confirm product quality and yields in a significantly scaled-up facility. Numerous successful runs were carried out in the period beginning in 2005 and through mid-2007, culminating in the successful processing of Athabasca bitumen in mid-2007.
In 2005, Ivanhoe completed a merger with Ensyn Group Inc. and now has full control of the patented, proprietary upgrading technology for the development of heavy oil. Ensyn Corporation retains the rights to biomass applications.
Ivanhoe now is working with AMEC, its tier one contractor, on the design and engineering of full-scale HTL facilities related to the commercial initiatives under way.
In addition, Ivanhoe has commissioned the Feedstock Test Facility (FTF), a highly sophisticated, long-term testing facility located in San Antonio, Texas, at Southwest Research Institute. The FTF will facilitate design optimization of commercial facilities and will allow for testing of third-party crudes at a manageable scale.
The HTL petroleum pilot plant, commissioned in 1998 in Ottawa, Ontario, completed over 90 runs of heavy oil and bitumen from all over the world
The HTL process uses common sand as a heat carrier. This image shows an ultra-fine layer of coke on the sand that exits the reactor, and on the right, clean, regenerated sand after the sand exits the reheater.
