Grant: Applied Research and Development Grants - Level 1

TWD is a leading multi-discipline engineering, procurement and construction management company in the business of providing project development, execution and engineering services to their clients. The company's expertise spans the oil and gas, pipelines, terminalling and blending, renewables, power, chemical processing, and food and beverage sectors. TWD is also in the midst of developing a unique process technology for the partial-upgrading of bitumen that provides a pipeline-able and refinery-ready synthetic crude oil product, which also happens to contain a significant amount of renewable carbon.*This technology is meant to address a growing problem for the Canadian economy. Bitumen is considered heavy petroleum that does not flow well. Refineries and pipelines are generally not able to handle 100% heavy petroleum and, as a result, Canada's bitumen is exported at a significant discount compared to lighter crude oils and requires the use of diluents to transport it. The technology is unique in that it uses chemicals derived from renewable feedstock, such as biomass, in the upgrading process in order to incorporate a renewable carbon component. The objective is to accomplish this renewable carbon integration while producing a pipeline-able product to the refinery in high yields without the use of diluents.*In order to reach this objective, all liquid, solid, and gas products of the process must be identified. The yield and composition of the liquid product must be determined and compared against partially-upgraded bitumen from conventional processes. TWD aims to partner with Sheridan College to develop methods for the collection, extraction and characterization of products from this unique partial-upgrading process. Using state-of-the-art instruments from Sheridan's Chemical & Environmental labs, the results of this project will determine the marketability of the products and economic feasibility of TWD's process technology.*