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Foreign investors are buying up Canadian tar sands. Read more here.
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The Process
background information
The Legacy I process, though proprietary, will be used worldwide to extract bitumen from tar sand deposits. Today there are basically two processes in use: the Clarke Hot Water process and In–Situ. Both of these processes function in their respective environments, but would not function whatsoever on the Utah tar sands. Conversely, the Legacy I process functions just about anywhere.
Clarke Hot Water Process vs. Legacy I
The Clarke Hot Water process, as it implies, uses hot water to separate the the bitumen from the sand after it is mined from the surface. Sounds simple right? Well, the concept is simple, but the actual processes is fairly complex. One thing is sure – water is precious and so is the resource used to heat ALL that water, natural gas. Immense amounts of water, natural gas, and electricity are used to create a useable crude. Furthermore, the emulsions and froths speak volumes of the effects on the extracted bitumen. By heating it and adding emulsifiers to the bitumen many good qualities of the bitumen are lost.
With Legacy I’s process the bitumen never comes into contact with water and it is done at relatively low heat levels, a far cry from the energy used in the Clarke process. Does it make sense to use two barrels of oil to extract just one? Of course not. Legacy I has a process that will produce several barrels to every barrel used.
In–Situ vs. Legacy I
In–Situ is a much different process than the Clarke process. In the Clarke process the tar sand is mined and sent to the plant for extraction. For oil sands that are too deep to support surface mining an in–situ or in–place recovery system is necessary to produce the bitumen. Due to the fact that bitumen will not flow under normal conditions because of its heavy viscous nature, steam is forced into the deposit allowing the bitumen to flow into wells. There are great disadvantages to this.
Similar to the downfalls of the Clarke process, In Situ processes use water and natural gas in exorbitant amounts to extract the bitumen. Again, the Legacy I process will out perform the efficiency of In–Situ by leaps and bounds. So much energy is used to extract the bitumen that it is almost counter productive. Wasting one resource to gain another doesn‘t happen with the Legacy I process.
the bottom line
The breakdown is simple for the Legacy I process. The tar sand is mined, because it doesn‘t flow freely. After it is mined it is crushed and fed into the extraction unit where we utilize natural phenomena and a harmless chemical to extract the bitumen. Once extracted, the sands leftover from the extraction are cleaned and returned to the environment exceeding EPA standards. Tailings ponds are a huge problem in Canadian Tar Sand operations. Legacy I has solved those problems and made reclamation a priority. Also, another advantage of the Legacy I process is our ability to extract and retain all the qualities of a pure, unaltered bitumen which is far more valuable than what is currently available. Throughout this process minimal amounts of energy are used to extract the bitumen. Our energy units in versus energy units out far outpaces the competition.