• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.10-17
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• 2013

Heavy oil residue upgrading process was being used in conventional refinery process. Recently, as the importance of non conventional energy development is growing up, the commercial projects of heavy oil upgrading are getting more active than before. For having competitive business model in the resource competition, non conventional energy development should be considered as an important business strategy. In developing oil sands, extra heavy oil, and shale gas, canadian oil sands and extra heavy oil have great importance in substitution of conventional oil consumption. In oil sands development, the bitumen, which is extracted from oil sands, has great value after upgrading or refining process. Similar process is being used current conventional refinery process. The bitumen is highly viscous hydrocarbon. This bitumen includes impurities which can not be treated in conventional refinery process. As this reason, specified process is needed in bitumen or extra heavy oil upgrading process. Moreover, there will be additional specified facilities in the process of production, transportation and marketing. In oil sands, there are various kinds of commercial upgrading process. Extraction, dilution, coking and cracking method were being used commercially.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.29-40
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• 2018

Oil sands, which are largely distributed in Canada and Venezuela, are a mixture of crude oil and sandy soils. In order to extract crude oil from oil sands, construction of massive oil sand plants is required. Generally, the typically-used foundation types of the oil sand plant are driven piles and cast-in-place piles. Most of the oil sand plants are located in cold and remote regions. Installation of driven piles in frozen or organic surface soils is difficult due to high resistance and installation equipment accessability, while the cast-in-place pile has concrete curing problem due to cold temperature. Helical pile can be installed quickly and easily using rotation with a little help of vertical load. As the installation of helical pile is available using a small and light-weight installation equipment, accessibility of installation equipment is improved. The helical pile has an advantage of easy removal by rotation in reverse direction compared with that of installation. Furthermore, reuse of removed helical piles is possible when the piles are structurally safe. In this study, the behavior of helical piles varying helix pitch was analyzed based on the numerical analysis results. Numerical model was calibrated based on the results of model helical pile tests in laboratory. The ultimate helical pile loads, the displacement of each helix attached to the shaft of the helical pile, and the load sharing ratio of each helix were analyzed.