• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.5-9
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• 2016

The purpose of this paper is to define criteria to be used as part of the engineering design for an oil sands plant equipped with the steam assisted gravity drainage process. In this effort, the oil treatment process of an oil sands plant on a pilot scale was focused for detailed investigation. The thermodynamic properties of the process fluid, which is mainly composed of bitumen and water, were estimated with the CPA model. The commercial tool aspen HYSYS was used for the analysis throughout this work along with the provided input data and some necessary assumptions. From the simulation results, the heat and mass balances for a 300 BPD plant were established in order to define standard data for its modular design. In particular, the basis of design for equipment size, heat transfer areas, capital cost and operation cost was extensively discussed.

• The Korean Journal of Petroleum Geology
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.12-20
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• 2008

Oil sands in Canada are representative example of unconventional resources whose reserve estimates are as large as those in Saudi Arabia. Typical reservoir rocks of oil sands consist of channel-related deposits formed in a tide-dominated depositional setting. The tidal deposits are commonly characterized by spatially complicated and heterogeneous properties. Successful engineering methods to develop oil sands require in-depth understanding in the spatial distribution of reservoir properties. Geological model for oil sand reservoir characterization can be built on the basis of comparative studies of ancient and modem analogues. In particular, modern analogue studies become increasingly indispensable, since they provide better understanding in the reservoir-rock forming process and more importantly in the external mechanism responsible for the reservoir heterogeneity. Tide-dominated environment along the west coast of Korea is considered as one of the most excellent modem analogues of oil-sand forming depositional environment. Korean tidal environment provides insights on the origin of mud breccia, facies and stratigraphic architecture which are key issues to the characterization of oil sand reservoirs.

• 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.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.299-312
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• 2020

The aim of this paper was to investigating the effects of soil relative density, construction materials roughness, oil type (gasoil, crude oil, and used motor oil), and oil content on the internal and interface shear behavior of sand with different construction materials by means of a modified large direct shear test apparatus. Tests conducted on the soil-soil (S-S), soil-rough concrete (S-RC), soil-smooth concrete (S-SC), and soil-steel (S-ST) interfaces and results showed that the shear strength of S-S interface is always higher than the soil-material interfaces. Internal and interface friction angles of sand beds increased by increase in relative density and decreased by increasing oil content. The oil properties (especially viscosity) played a major role in interface friction behavior. Despite the friction angles of contaminated sands with viscous fluids drastically decreased, it compensated by the apparent cohesion and adhesion developed between the soil grains and construction materials.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.139-151
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• 2022

SAGD (Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage) method is widely used for oil recovery in oil sands regions. The SAGD operation causes surface displacement, which can affect the stability of oil recovery plants and trigger various geological disasters. Therefore, it isimportant to monitor the surface displacement due to SAGD in the oil sands region. In this study, the surface displacement due to SAGD operations of the Athabasca oil sands region in Alberta, Canada, was observed by applying Permanent Scatterer Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PSInSAR) technique to the Sentinel-1 time series SAR data acquired from 2016 to 2021. We also investigated the construction and expansion of SAGD facilitiesfrom Landsat-7/8 time seriesimages, from which the characteristics of the surface displacement according to the oil production activity of SAGD were analyzed. Uplift rates of 0.3-2.5 cm/yr in the direction of line of sight were observed over the SAGDs and their vicinity, whereas subsidence rates of -0.3--0.6 cm/yr were observed in areas more than several kilometers away from the SAGDs and not affected by oil recovery activities. Through the analysis of Landsat-7/8 images, we could confirm that the SAGDs operating after 2012 and showing high oil production activity caused uplift rates greater than 1.6 cm/yr due to the subsurface steam injection. Meanwhile, very small uplift rates of several mm per year occurred over SAGDs which have been operated for a longer period of time and show relatively low oil production activity. This was probably due to the compression of reservoir sandstone due to continuous oil recovery. The subsidence observed in areas except for the SAGDs and their vicinity estimated to be a gradual land subsidence caused by melting of the permafrost. Considering the subsidence, it was expected that the uplift due to SAGD operation would be greater than that observed by the PSInSAR. The results of this study confirm that the PSInSAR can be used as an effective means for evaluating productivity and stability of SAGD in the extreme cold regions.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.147-170
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• 2014

This paper focuses on the study of the most recent ultra-filtration techniques, based on porous polymer membranes, used for the treatment of wastewater from oil, mine and hydrometallurgical industries. The performance of porous membranes used in separation and recovery of oil and heavy metals from wastewater, was evaluated by the polymer composition and by the membrane characteristics, as it follows: hydrophobicity or hydrophilicity, porosity, carrier (composition and concentration), selectivity, fouling, durability, separation efficiency and operating conditions. The oil/water efficient separation was observed on ultra-filtration (UF) techniques, with porous membranes, whereas heavy metals recovery from wastewater was observed using porous membranes with carrier. It can be concluded, that in the ultra-filtration wastewater treatments, a hybrid system, with porous polymer membranes with or without carrier, can be used for these two applications: oil/water separation and heavy metals recovery.

• Journal of Korea Soil Environment Society
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.91-97
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• 1997

The result of an investigation conducted to study the effect of crude oil contamination on the geotechnical properties of sand is presented. The effect of the degree of oil contamination on compaction charateristics, shear strength, and one-dimensional compression charateristics has been investigated. The test results indicate that the compaction charateristics are somewhat influenced by oil contamination The angle friction of sand (based on total stress basis) decreases due to the presence of oil within the pore spaces in sand. The compression charateristics of sand are significantly influenced by oil contamination. The details of the tests conducted and the results are presented in the paper.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.234-241
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• 2011

Recently, exploration and development of oil sands are thriving due to high oil price. Because oil sands reservoir usually exists as a thin layer, multicomponent VSP, which has the advantage of the high-resolution around the borehole, is more effective than surface seismic survey in exploring oil sand reservoir. In addition, prestack phase-screen migration is effective for multicomponent seismic data because it is based on an one-way wave equation. In this study, we examined the applicability of the prestack phase-screen migration for multicomponent RVSP data to image the thin oil sand reservoir. As a preprocessing tool, we presented a method for separating P-wave and PS-wave from multicomponent RVSP data by using incidence angle and rotation matrix. To verify it, we have applied the developed wavefield separation method to synthetic data obtained from the velocity model including a horizontal layer and dipping layers. Also, we compared the migrated image by using P-wave with that by using PS-wave. As a result, the PS-wave migrated image has higher resolution and wide coverage than P-wave migrated image. Finally, we have applied the prestack phase-screen migration to the synthetic data from the velocity model simulating oil sand reservoir in Canada. The results show that the PS-wave migrated image describe the top and bottom boundaries of the thin oil sand reservoir more clearly than the P-wave migrated image.

• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.61-67
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• 2010

The purpose of this paper is to study and analyze the failure examples on tribological characteristics of an automotive steering system. In this failure study, the grease leakage may stick leaked grease, dust, and wear particles between pinion and rack gears in mechanical steering system. In the case of seal failures such as a rod seal, o-ring and oil seals, the gear box and oil pump do not operate properly due to lack of oils. This means that oil pump does not supply a working fluid and produce a normal oil pressure of the steering system. This leads to leak a working fluid from the seals and produce a wear between pinion and rack gears. Especially, the leaked oil is usually mixed with internal wear particles and foreign dust/fine sands. Thus no leakage of working oils is very important design concepts, which is strongly related to the sealing components and smoothly operating of the mechanical friction parts of power steering system.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Geothermal and Hydrothermal Energy
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.12-21
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• 2022

Steam assisted gravity drainage(SAGD) is a process that drills well in the underground oil sands layer, injects hightemperature steam, lowers the viscosity of buried bitumen, and recovers it to the ground. Recently, direct contact steam generator(DCSG) is being developed to maximize steam efficiency for SAGD process. The DCSG requires high technology to achieve pressurized combustion and steam generation in accordance with underground pressurized conditions. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a combustion technology that can control the heat load and exhaust gas composition. In this study, process analysis of high-pressurized DCSG was conducted to apply oxygen enrichment technology in which nitrogen of the air was partially removed for increasing steam production and reducing fuel consumption. As the process analysis conditions, methane as the fuel and normal air or oxygen enriched air as the oxidizing agent were applied to high-pressurized DCSG process model. A simple combustion reaction program was used to calculate the property variations for combustion temperature, steam ratio and residual heat in exhaust gas. As a major results, the steam production efficiency of DCSG using the pure oxygen was about 6% higher than that of the normal air due to the reducing nitrogen in the air. The results of this study will be used as operating data to test the demonstration device.