At the University of Alberta, Alireza Nouri is investigating important challenges facing Canada’s oil and gas industry, from improving production to advancing safer and more efficient subsurface operations.
Much of the petroleum engineer’s research focuses on steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD). This common approach uses high-temperature steam to reduce the viscosity of bitumen and heavy oil in oil sands reservoirs, making them easier to pump out.
Nouri and his team are studying problems that reduce SAGD efficiency and increase operating costs — problems such as scale buildup and plugging.
The researchers are also pursuing innovative ideas, like the feasibility of replacing some of the energy-intensive steam with methane or waste gases from oil extraction. Not only would that reduce costs, it would cut greenhouse gas emissions.
In addition, the lab is helping researchers explore broader subsurface energy and environmental questions. For example, the same high-pressure, high-temperature infrastructure can be used to study how rocks, fluids and well materials behave in geothermal systems or carbon storage projects.
To tackle questions like these, they’re using a one-of-a-kind testing setup funded by the CFI.
Simulating a variety of scenarios
In a large glassed-off section of their lab, Nouri’s team has all the equipment required to physically simulate a variety of underground scenarios — and to do it at a meaningful scale.
It starts by putting the rock or soil samples they’re studying into testing cells. Next, the researchers turn up the temperature and pressure to replicate the extreme conditions found underground. Then they inject the gas or liquid of interest — brine, steam, methane or solvents, for example — and measure the physical and chemical impacts.
“What we have here is truly unique,” says Nouri. “It’s a universal subsurface-simulation platform.”
According to Darcy Spady, president of the Society of Petroleum Engineers Foundation and a member of the University of Alberta’s Petroleum Industry Advisory Committee, the lab is filling an acute need. “What Dr. Nouri is doing at UAlberta is critical for cutting-edge research and simulation,” he says.
“Almost every task we do in the industry is in a high-pressure subsurface environment, and duplicating that real-life scenario is a very high-tech, costly process,” he points out. “Having a lab environment to replicate and predict the science makes Canada a global leader in steam-assisted production.”
As a result, oil patch heavyweights like Suncor, Imperial Oil and Canadian Natural Resources Limited are engaging with Nouri’s lab.
Win-win innovations
His lab wouldn’t be able to attract those projects without the CFI-funded infrastructure, Nouri says. Companies are often willing to fund salaries and supplies for university research that benefits their operations, he explains, but not the equipment that work requires.
In part that’s because acquiring and setting up new equipment can take months, if not years — longer than industry is prepared to wait. Moreover, companies may not want to fund university infrastructure that could benefit a competitor after the research project they’ve commissioned is completed.
“CFI makes such projects possible,” says Nouri.
In turn, his team publishes papers that advance the entire industry. And the research they undertake helps make Canada’s oil and gas sector more sustainable, efficient and competitive.
Meanwhile, the students in his lab gain hands-on experience with advanced research infrastructure, creating a pipeline of highly qualified professionals for Canadian oil and gas producers.
“It’s a win-win,” says Nouri.
The research project featured in this story also benefits from funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
