Improved oil recovery techniques and their role in energy efficiency and reducing CO₂ footprint of oil production

Production of mature oil fields emits significant amount of CO₂ related to circulation and handling of large volumes of gas and water. This can be reduced either by (1) using a low-carbon energy source and/or (2) reducing the volumes of the non-hydrocarbon produced/injected fluids. This paper describes how improved oil recovery...

Prediction of stirling-cycle-based heat pump performance and environmental footprint with exergy analysis and lca

The use of Stirling-cycle-based heat pumps in high-temperature applications and waste heat recovery at an industrial scale is of increasing interest due to the promising role in producing thermal energy with zero CO2 emissions. This paper analyzes one such technology as developed by Olvondo Technology and installed at the pharmaceutical company...

On the sustainability of CO₂ storage through CO₂ – Enhanced oil recovery

This work uses pilot examples of CO₂ enhanced oil recovery to analyze whether and under which circumstances it is exergetically favorable to sequester CO₂ through enhanced oil recovery. We find that the net storage efficiency (ratio between the stored and captured CO₂) of the carbon capture and storage (CCS)...

Unit exergy cost and specific CO₂ emissions of the electricity generation in the Netherlands

Exergy and environmental analyses have been developed to determine the performance of the electricity generation in the Dutch mix. A comparative assessment of diverse technological routes, including fossil and renewable energy resources consumption, is carried out in terms of the exergy costs and specific CO₂ emissions. Hence, an...

Sustainable production of hydrocarbon fields guided by full-cycle exergy analysis

To mitigate the negative impacts of hydrocarbon fuels on climate change complementary decision tools should be considered when selecting or evaluating the performance of a certain production scheme. The exergy analysis can give valuable information on the management of the oil and gas reservoirs. It can also be used to calculate the CO<sub>2<...

Mass and heat integration in ethanol production mills for enhanced process efficiency and exergy-based renewability performance

This paper presents the process design and assessment of a sugarcane-based ethanol production system that combines the usage of both mass and heat integration (pinch analysis) strategies to enhance the process efficiency and renewability performance. Three configurations were analyzed: (i) Base case: traditional ethanol production (1G); (ii)...

Exergy return on exergy investment analysis of natural-polymer (Guar-Arabic gum) enhanced oil recovery process

It has been estimated that 17% of the recovered hydrocarbon exergy in oil fields [1]is spent on fluid handling and recovery costs. Therefore, improving the efficiency of oil production can give an some contribution to more efficient energy usage and therefore minimizing to some extent the carbon footprint. By way of example we present in this...