Solar Enhanced Oil Recovery
www.SolarEnhancedOilRecovery.com

What is Solar Enhanced Oil Recovery?

Solar enhanced oil recovery or Solar EOR is a new energy technology which utilizes concentrating solar power plants (with "parabolic troughs") to capture the energy of the sun - instead of natural gas (which fires boilers) - for steam generation wherein the steam is injected into oil reservoirs to produce oil through the standard enhanced oil recovery technologies.

Unfortunately for the nascent Solar EOR industry and fairly-established concentrating solar power industry, natural gas prices have plummeted to (+/-) $4.00/mmbtu, making Solar EOR a technology that cannot be justified or considered by either oil and gas companies/producers or investors wanting a competitive return on their investment.  

Additional problems with Solar EOR are the problems relating to the days when the sun isn't shining - rain, fog, drizzle - and there isn't enough (or any) steam that is generated.  Even when the sun is shining, the energy produced from the sun from the Solar EOR system generates steam for only about 5 hours/day. As oil and natural gas companies engaged in enhanced oil recovery operate 24 x 7 x 365, few, if any, will find much benefit being able to generate steam for only 20% - 25% of each day.  These companies engaged in enhanced oil recovery operations will therefore, still be required to have a natural gas fired power plant for steam generation purposes, for their operations. There is no learning curve for these oil and natural gas companies engaged in enhanced oil recovery. Oil and natural gas companies know and understand natural gas fired power plants - typically having their own natural gas to run the power plant.

As an alternative to generating steam via concentrating solar power and Solar EOR's exorbitant first costs, we offer "tried and true" natural gas based CHP systems take the place of lower efficient natural gas power plants. We recover the practically-free hot water from the engines, for use in steam generation for enhanced oil recovery operations.  Pictures of a recently-completed CHP system is found below.

The CHP System below is rated at 900 kW with a 
heat rate of 4100 btu/kW & system efficiency of 92%.

The CHP System below features: (2) Natural Gas Engines @ 450 kW each 
on one skid with optional Selective Catalytic Reduction system 
which removes Nitrogen Oxides to "non-detect."

Highly-efficient CHP Systems are an ideal solution for Enhanced Oil Recovery operations which can generate steam along with the power needed for the EOR project.