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Oil sands extraction plant debottlenecking: an optimization approach

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Abstract

Debottlenecking is highly desirable to increase the production throughput for the oil sands industry. In this work, the bottleneck identification and capacity expansion problem is solved through optimization techniques. In the proposed debottlenecking procedure, first-principles method and Gaussian process modeling approach are applied to build process models. Depending on the type of process model used, the optimization problem is solved either as a parametric linear programming problem or as a nonlinear optimization problem. By solving the optimization problem, the bottlenecks can be identified and the necessary capacity expansion for process units for bottleneck removal is reported. The proposed method is demonstrated through applications in oil sands production process.

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Acknowledgements

The authors greatly appreciate the support from NSERC and Alberta Innovates.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

    Yuan Yuan, Zukui Li & Biao Huang

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  1. Yuan Yuan
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  2. Zukui Li
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  3. Biao Huang
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Correspondence to Zukui Li.

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Yuan, Y., Li, Z. & Huang, B. Oil sands extraction plant debottlenecking: an optimization approach. Optim Lett 14, 945–957 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11590-018-1349-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11590-018-1349-4

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