Date of Award

2022

Publication Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.Sc.

Department

Chemistry and Biochemistry

Keywords

Sulfide and reduced sulfur species, Field-level screening, Stream assisted gravity drainage, Surface casing vent flow

Supervisor

S.O.C. Mundle

Rights

info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) operations extract viscous bitumen from the subsurface. During routine operations, fugitive gas can present as a surface casing vent flow (SCVF) or a gas migration (GM) in soils. Depending on regulatory thresholds, these fugitive gases can be classified as serious or non-serious. The presence of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) automatically classifies a well as serious by regulators. Thus, accurate detection and quantification is necessary to meet and exceed regulatory policies and provide the highest standards of environmental health and safety for the energy sector. This thesis investigates the impacts temperature and steam present during SAGD operations can have on the sample collection and detection of reduced sulfur species (RSS). Field results obtained from different sample techniques, handheld instruments, gas tubes and a field gas chromatograph (GC) suggested that identification of H2S and measurement of H2S concentrations are sensitive to the techniques and instruments used.

Included in

Chemistry Commons

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