Lloydminster Upgrader

The Husky Lloydminster Upgrader, located at Lloydminster, Saskatchewan, is an important component of Husky’s midstream business. By converting heavy oil to a high-quality, low sulphur synthetic oil, the Upgrader is a key link between Husky’s heavy oil assets and conventional oil markets.

The feedstock for the Upgrader is heavy oil from deposits in northeastern Alberta and western Saskatchewan, and bitumen from Husky’s Tucker Oil Sands project located 30 kilometres northwest of Cold Lake, Alberta. This heavy oil and bitumen is mixed with lighter hydrocarbons (condensate or naphtha) to reduce the viscosity, allowing it to flow easily through Husky and third party pipelines to the Upgrader.

The valuable end product – synthetic crude oil – is used in the production of gasoline and diesel fuels in conventional refineries in the Canada and United States. The upgrading process produces two marketable by-products: sulphur and petroleum coke. Sulphur is sold both in Canada and the U.S. to customers in the fertilizer and chemical industries primarily for manufacturing industrial sulphuric acid. Fuel grade petroleum coke, used to fuel boilers or cement kilns, is sold to North American and offshore customers.

Process Summary

(Based on 2008 onstream rounded daily averages)

Upgrading Process

Crude Plant

The first step in the upgrading process involves heavy oil entering the crude unit where contaminants, such as water, water-soluble salt, clay and sand which can corrode and plug the downstream process equipment, are removed from the oil. Diluent is recovered for reuse in producing heavy oil fields. Naphtha, jet fuel, gas oil and residuum are separated for further processing. The straight-run distillate streams, jet fuel and gas oil are routed to the secondary upgrading plant where sulphur and nitrogen impurities are removed by hydrotreating.

The heavier atmospheric residual oil from the crude fractionator’s bottom section (about 50 percent of the total crude) is routed to the primary upgrading plant, the hydrocracker, for further upgrading.

Primary Upgrading Plant

The primary upgrading plant consists of two separate trains of hydrocracking units plus downstream fractionation facilities.

The hydrocracker reaction unit converts medium residual oil into light fractions. Inside the hydrocracking reactors, the atmospheric residue is subjected to a high-temperature, high-pressure hydrogen atmosphere and is cracked in the presence of a catalyst into lighter and heavier components. The hydrocracker reaction effluents are then fractionated by atmospheric and vacuum distillations.

The naphtha, jet fuel and gas oil streams are again gathered and routed to the hydrotreaters in the secondary upgrading plant to remove impurities. The heavier residual material is routed to the delayed coker unit in the primary upgrading plant for the final “bottom-of-the-barrel” processing.

Delayed coking is a semi-continuous thermal cracking process in which a heavy hydrocarbon feedstock is converted to lighter, more-valuable products and petroleum coke. Gas oil and lighter products are produced and sent to the hydrotreaters to remove impurities, while the high boiling point fraction (over 524º Celsius) is converted to a petroleum coke.

Hydrocarbon fractions that boil under 524ºC become synthetic crude oil blending components.

Upgrading by-products hydrogen sulphide and ammonia are removed. The hydrogen sulphide gas is collected and concentrated by amine treating and converted to liquid sulphur in the sulphur plant. The ammonia gas is broken down in the sulphur plant.

Lloydminster Upgrader Flow Chart

Click to enlarge

Secondary Upgrading

The secondary upgrading plant consists of two hydrotreating units: the naphtha/jet hydrotreater and the gas oil hydrotreater. The naphtha/jet hydrotreater reduces the sulphur and nitrogen content of the feed and improves the combustion characteristics of the transportation fuels which will ultimately be derived from the synthetic crude.
The gas/oil hydrotreater reduces the sulphur, nitrogen and aromatic hydrocarbons to acceptable levels to allow subsequent processing of the gas oil in a conventional refinery, catalytic cracker or hydrocracker.

The Upgrader now ships 2,500 bbls/day of off-road, low sulphur diesel, primarily for locomotive use.

Hydrogen Plant

The hydrogen plant provides high-purity hydrogen required as feed for the hydrocracker reaction unit, gas oil and naphtha/ jet hydrotreating units where it is chemically consumed by hydrogenation, desulphurization and denitrification reactions.

Sulphur Recovery Plant

The sulphur recovery plant converts the hydrogen sulphide gases from the upgrading process into liquid sulphur. More than 99.5 percent of the sulphur in the original heavy crude feedstock is removed and converted to liquid sulphur.

Tankage

Products from the hydrotreaters are sent to blending tanks. There, the blending components are mixed with a small amount of naphtha and butane to produce the final, finished synthetic crude oil for sale and pipeline transportation.

Cogeneration is the simultaneous production of electricity and useful heat from a single fuel source. A 215-megawatt natural gas fired cogeneration plant on the Upgrader site can provide 100 percent of the Upgrader’s process steam requirements in addition to generating up to 10 percent of the province of Saskatchewan’s electricity supply.

The Meridian Cogeneration Plant is jointly managed by Husky and TransAlta through a 50/50 joint venture. Husky operates a 130 million litre per year ethanol plant in the Upgrader complex.

Health, Safety & Environment

Protecting the environment and ensuring the health and safety of employees, neighbours and customers is integral to day-to-day operations. The Upgrader has rigorous process safety and environmental management programs that meet or exceed industry and regulatory standards.

To enhance the existing environmental controls, including continuous stack emission monitoring and air and ground water monitoring, the HLU sampled more than 13,000 points for fugitive emissions. In 2008, the HLU has a waste handling facility to segregate the solid wastes generated onsite into the appropriate categories to improve handling and promote the three R’s - reduce, reuse and recycle.

The Upgrader’s employees have received multiple awards including a Certificate of Achievement from the Saskatchewan Workers’ Compensation Board, a Merit Rebate Award from the Alberta Workers’ Compensation Board, a Certificate of Recognition from the Alberta Petrochemical Safety Council

Award, and several Safe Handling awards from Canadian National Railways.

Husky initiated an Environmental Performance Reporting System (EPRS) to collect and consolidate operational and environmental data, greenhouse gas (GHG) and other air emissions. The Company is addressing GHG emissions by improving the energy efficiency of existing operations and investing in new technologies, such as cogeneration, which will lead to substantial emissions reductions and energy efficiencies.

Upgrader Fast Facts

• The Upgrader was commissioned in 1992 at an original design capacity of 46,000 barrels of synthetic crude oil per day.
• It took four years to construct at a cost of $1.6 billion.
• At peak construction, in October 1991, more than 3,800 workers were on site.
• More than 3.2 million hours of engineering work were invested in the project.

Lloydminster Upgrader Fact Sheet