PROCESS FOR THE PRODUCTION OF PIPELINEABLE CRUDE OIL FROM HEAVIER HYDROCARBONS

摘要

A process for the production of stable, pipelineable crude oil from heavy oils and/or bitumen that comprises feeding the heavy oils or bitumens either directly or after preheating into a fired heater. The feed is heated and kept at an elevated temperature long enough to break the viscosity. Alternatively, the feed is heated to a lesser temperature and transferred to a vessel for soaking over a longer time to break its viscosity. The heavy oil or bitumen feed may be prefractioned to removed lighter fractions prior to transferring the heavier fraction to the heater or heater/soaker which outputs visbroken products with lowered viscosity that are pipelineable crude oil. For predistillation, the lighter fractions are recombined with the visbroken product for pipeline transport.