By Allan Maurer
RALEIGH, NC –Zapping heavy crude oil with high power electron beam accelerators similar to ones used to treat cancer upgrades it so that it is fit for use as fuel. That’s important, explains PetroBeam President and CEO Gusten (Bud) Brainerd, because 70 percent of the world’s oil resources are heavy crude and production of light crude has peaked even as demand for it continues to swell.
The rising demand for transportation grade oil will have to be met by the heavy oil reserves. “We’re developing a cleaner, more energy and cost efficient method of processing heavy oil,” says Brainerd.
Petrobeam, founded in 2005, has raised $9.5 million in private equity from strategic partners and angel investors. Brainerd says the company will do additional private equity capital raises but not public offerings.
Ion Beam Applications S.A., took a 10 percent equity stake in the company (representing an investment of about $6 million) in 2008.
PetroBeam and IBA have made significant preliminary tests at IBA’s facility in Long Island, NY over, validating the process at the level of a limited size pilot plant.
A new pilot plant capable of treating 1000 barrel per day is currently under construction at the same Long Island facility. It will be operational at the end of 2009, Brainerd says.
The PetroBeam process consists of using high-energy electrons to effectively initiate hydrocarbon cracking reactions.
E-beam processing is a versatile, industrial alternative to conventional thermal and thermal catalytic processing. E-Beam processing has a fifty year history of industrial success in a wide range of applications.
Savings using the process compared to other methods are significant, anywhere from one half to one fifth that of competing technologies, Brainerd says.
The 13-employee company is using off-the-shelf equipment. “All we’re doing is taking the technology and migrating it to the petroleum industry,” Brainerd notes.
Research into the effects of radiation on hydrocarbons began in the late 1940s after the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. “Everyone asked what effects does radiation have on everything,” says Brainerd. The U.S. was particularly interested on what effect it would have on gas and aviation fuel.
They discovered that the type of radiation created by an atomic explosion gels hydrocarbons.
Then, toward the end of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the U.S. had an interest in keeping the U.S.S.R’s nuclear physicists busy with non-weapons research and funded projects to further research the effects of radiation on hydrocarbons.
I t wasn’t until 2005, however, that researchers in Kazakhstan, also partly funded by U.S. money, came across a set of conditions that pushed the reaction to a point where it made the heavy crude less dense. “That’s when we decided to get involved,” says Brainerd.
That research formed the basis of Petrobeam’s first patent, which outlines the conditions in which the heavy oil can be treated and made less dense.
A larger 10,000 barrel a day full scale production facility will have a price tag of about $30 million, Brainerd says. “Once we get a commitment for that first unit, it will take about two years before it’s operational.”
Online: www.petrobeam.com
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