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Well Resources (WRI) is the technology developer and process licensor for SELEX-Asp process. WRI actively pursues the development of non-combustive applications for asphaltenes.
About
About Well Resources Inc. (WRI)
Founded in 2006, WRI (www.wellresources.ca) is a boutique clean technology company headquartered in Alberta, Canada. WRI's primary area of focus is in the energy sector, where it develops and licenses revolutionary technologies that promote effective resource utilization.
WRI offers commercially viable green technologies that address the pressing environmental and safety concerns of today and into the future. By offering future-forward processes, WRI empowers the energy industry in furthering its commitment to sustainability and unlocking its path towards net-zero emissions, while holding safety paramount.
WRI entered the technology development business aiming to solve pervasive problems related to the processing and utilization of heavy crudes, including high emissions intensity and relatively lower utilization for valuable end-products. Over time, WRI has expanded its global presence through the establishment of strategic partnerships with renowned international research institutes to progress its industry-leading research and development initiatives. Through these initiatives, WRI's commercial technology offerings now include processes ranging from a safe and sustainable alkylation process that eliminates reliance on dangerous and hazarouds H2SO4 and HF catalysts ("Ionikylation") and a bottom-of-the-barrel granular carbon rejection process ("SELEX-Asp"). WRI's modernized technologies are commercially implemented worldwide in upwards of one dozen active projects.
About Selective Extraction of Asphaltenes ("SELEX-Asp") Process
The SELEX-Asp process is a patented and commercially proven decarbonization technology backed by over 40 years of research and development. The process is used to upgrade oil by removing solid carbon (asphaltenes) from petroleum feedstocks.
Inspired by the decaffeination process, SELEX-Asp is a solvent-based physical separation process that operates under the principles of supercritical fluid extraction and fractionation. The technology is low complexity, energy efficient, and cost effective.
To date, there exists 36,500 bpd of installed SELEX-Asp processing capacity across 5 installations. The largest single unit has a capacity of 20,000 bpd. An additional 35,000 bpd of SELEX-Asp processing capacity has been licensed worldwide.
Why SELEX-Asp?
SELEX-Asp is a transformative decarbonization platform that allows the petroleum industry to achieve its emissions reduction targets.
Through a proprietary vapor-solid separation system, SELEX-Asp is used to produce premium decarbonized feedstocks without the need for expensive thermal or catalytic processes, such as coking and ebullated bed hydrocracking.
SELEX-Asp uniquely allows for the clean and selective removal of natural asphaltenes as dry solid granules from petroleum residues. Solid asphaltenes can be safely and easily handled, and used for the production of value-added non-combustion carbon products. SELEX-Asp maximizes the yield of decarbonized oil that can be subsequently processed using low-cost packed bed hydroprocessing.
Key Benefits
The natural carbon produced from the SELEX-Asp process are a unique refining product. Typical refining processes reject asphaltenes in 1 of 2 ways:
1) As a highly viscous pitch material, typically from conventional solvent deasphalting processes operating in the liquid-liquid phase separation regime. The pitch contains some degree of shorter chained hydrocarbons that if recovered, would still be suitable for conventional refining.
2) As coke once resids are subjected to thermally/energy intensive coking processes. Coke is considered a refinery waste product that is either stored at the refiner's expense or exported abroad for use as a coal substitute for power generation.
The uniqueness of SELEX-Asp-derived natural carbons are that they a pure virgin asphaltene material that can be easily handled. The SELEX-Asp process can be modified to granulate asphaltenes with varying particle sizes.
In the late 2000s, WRI demonstrated the ability to transform asphaltenes into carbon fibre using lab-scale melt spinning techniques. While the production of carbon fibre from asphaltenes was shown to be technically feasible, WRI abandoned further development of this asphaltene end use due to the perceived high processing costs and complexities, relatively small market potential for carbon fibre (in comparison to the volumes that would be produced from a refinery operation), and fierce competition from established providers in the carbon fibre space.
WRI subsequently turned its attention to exploring asphaltene end uses that require minimal to no post-processing and for applications with high potential to place large quantities of asphaltenes. Such applications range from, but are not limited to environmental remediation to enhanced building materials. To pursue these opportunities, WRI has strategically entered into global alliances and cooperation agreements with other like-minded developers skilled in those arts to prove and commercialize the applications. In some cases, products incorporating asphaltenes in non-combustive ways are now commercially available.
Applications
-Environmental
-Building materials
-Other (not disclosed)