Driving the Global Economy
For over a century petroleum products have been the key engine responsible for driving the global economy. The status of oil and gas as primary energy sources is expected to remain for the foreseeable future, bridging the period where the world seeks to transition to more sustainable sources of energy.
Cascading Evolution
The upstream business, through which the natural resource is located and brought to the surface has seen the most significant changes over the past decades, with the introduction of unconventional sources such as tight oil and gas, oilsands, and liquefied natural gas.
These changes in the upstream business have cascaded through the midstream sector, which is focused on transporting and storage of the unrefined products to refineries and purification plants, and subsequent distribution of the refined products to engaged markets.
The downstream business units that introduce chemical and physical changes into the unrefined feedstocks to produce products that meet the Oil and Gas market needs have also had to deal with the changes in feedstock qualities.
Addressing Needs in Upstream, Midstream and Downstream Sectors
Coanda has been actively involved in addressing challenges in all three divisions of the oil and gas sector, and is well positioned to expand upon this support.
Pushing Development in Upstream
In the upstream sector, Coanda has applied its core competencies to address performance and design issues within the unconventional oilsands industry. We’ve aided clients to develop and fine tune emerging extraction techniques such as Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD). The company also has the in-house expertise to approach conventional reservoir modeling problems, and other upstream challenges.
Tackling Midstream Challenges
Coanda has completed numerous projects within the Midstream sector, addressing the unique challenges associated with the transport and blending of two phase systems governed by non-Newtonian rheology. Starting from first principles Coanda has developed pipeline purging procedures that are far more efficient than conventional cyclic pressure purging, helping the Oil and Gas industry to achieve better results in a fraction of the time with less resources. Coanda has also applied its expertise in mixing to quantify quality breakthrough times in tankage infrastructure, as a function of feed rates and qualities. This information could then be used by the sponsor company for scheduling purposes, to optimize efficiencies on its terminal infrastructure.
Leveraging Downstream Expertise
Coanda’s expertise includes tackling challenges in the downstream business, both with existing and emerging processes. For example, the company has done a number of projects addressing issues with both hydrogen addition and thermal bottom of the barrel processing units. These units involve two and three phases, operating at severe process conditions.
Coanda has had success addressing issues with these technologies using a combination of scaled physical modeling, analytical modeling and computational fluid dynamics. Using these techniques, Coanda has identified root causes associated with Oil and Gas process issues, and designed and evaluated proposed changes to address these deficiencies. These techniques have also been applied to complex environmental units aimed at sequestering heteroatoms.