| 초록 |
Recently, heavy or extra-heavy oil is regarded as an alternative energy source of conventional oil. However, lots of energy or diluent is necessary to transport heavy oil from production sites to upgrading facilities because of its high viscosity and low API degree. To reduce the energy or diluent consumption, partial upgrading process for lowering viscosity at production site is required. As a catalyst of RTP which is one of the upgrading processes, iron oxide nanoparticles were synthesized by using W/O microemulsion of water/ethanol/sodium oleate/toluene. By W/O microemulsion method, surface coated nanoparticles were synthesized to achieve well-dispersion in oil, and relatively uniform size and shape. To recover catalyst by magnetism after cracking reactions, iron oxide nanoparticles which have superparamagnetism need to be synthesized. From XRD and TEM, it was verified that these nanoparticles are mostly composed of magnetite and maghemite, and have spherical shapes and about 5nm diameters. These iron oxide nanoparticles will be applied to partial upgrading of bitumen. |
