| Oil sands is one of aboundant unconventional energy resources. Compared to conventional oil and gas resources, the exploitation of oil sands is characterized by high costs, high energy-consuming, more greenhouse gas emissions, and large environmental footprints. In order to develop deep buried or low oil content oil sands effectively, this work proposed a low-carbon green development of oil sands coupled with solar energy. The power derived from solar photovoltaic power generation system, and the excess energy generated can be stored in the wax for in situ downhole steam generator. Moreover, a simplified solvent extraction process is proposed to recover bitumen using the steam generated by intense solar power, and the oilfield wastewater can be treated in moving bed biofilm reactors using a novel suspended ceramic biocarrier produced from deoiling sand calcination. More solar farm would be built on reclaimed oil sand mines area soil co-contaminated by the integration of electrokinetics and biostimulation.This work investigated distribution of oil sands deposits and solar energy in China, and research framework was developed. Oil sands, bitumen, wastewater and soil were characterized, and the experiments were designed and carried out. For the in-situ bitumen recovery, the process called PVWIO was developed to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions. A photovoltaic stand-alone system was need to generate power. Heat energy produced by electric heaters was stored in the wax and injected into the bottom of the well. High pressure stream was produced by the downhole steam generator to weat the oil sands formation. The structural principle of the well and steam generator were designed, the paraffin wax were filtered, modified and compounded to achieve the optimum condition of PVWIO. The bitumen production from the SAGD operation was evaluated using a numerical simulation. For opening-up pit mining, the process called CSPSEO was developed for oil sands and extracted bitumen production. A series of solvents were used to extract bitumen process, the production of organic matters reached 65% and solvent loss of 3‰ in lab scal expriment. The energy consumption and fuel costs of CSPSEO process were calculated, the solar steam generation system was 17 MW for the plant with annual output 50,000 tons.In order to exploit oilsand and while improve its environmental footprints, the moving bed biofilm reactors(MBBR) was used in this study. The oilfield wastewater was treated in MBBR using a novel suspended ceramic biocarrier produced from deoiling sand calcination. More solar farm could be built on reclaimed oilsand mines soil. The investigation demonstrated that the MBBR filled with the suspended ceramic biocarrier was an effective and feasible process for removal of COD, petroleum hydrocarbons, and ammonium nitrogen from the waste water from oil sands extraction process. Modification of ceramic biocarrier with sepiolite was beneficial to improve the wastewater treatment efficiency. After 18 h of HRT operation, the NH3-N and COD of effluent in the MBBRs could satisfy the professional emission standard(grade one). The electricity consumption of aeration in the MBBR was 0.1 kw?h/kg(COD).A new Bio EK remediation approach was developed to decontaminate Pb-oil co-contaminated soil from oil sands mining by addition of chelating agent and surfactant as well as regular renewal of electrode reservoir solution. Adding EDTA, Tween 80, and regular refreshing the electrolyte achieve the optimum operating conditions for decontaminating the waste soil containing the heavy metals and organic compounds. From the overall experimented results, it can be conclude that the Bio EK process by biostimulating indigenous bacteria was effective in reducting metal toxicity from contaminated soils. Lastly, this work focused on the feasibility of oil sands development coupled with solar energy. A low-carbon green oil sand development was proposed by incorporating solar farm to the reclaimed oilsand mines. |
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