Anupgrader is a facility that upgradesbitumen (extra heavy oil) intosynthetic crude oil. Upgrader plants are typically located close tooil sands production, for example, theAthabasca oil sands inAlberta,Canada or theOrinoco tar sands inVenezuela.

Upgrading means usingfractional distillation and/or chemical treatment to convert bitumen so it can be handled by oil refineries. At a minimum, this means reducing its viscosity so that it can be pumped through pipelines (bitumen is 1000x more viscous than light crude oil). However this process often also includes separating out heavy fractions and reducing sulfur, nitrogen and metals like nickel and vanadium.

Upgrading may involve multiple processes:

• Vacuum distillation to separate lighter fractions, leaving behind a residue with molecular weights over 400.
• De-asphalting the vacuum distillation residue to remove the highest molecular weightalicyclic compounds, which precipitate as black/brownasphaltenes when the mixture is dissolved in C₃–C₇alkanes, leaving "de-asphalted oil" (DAO) in solution. A mixture of propane and butane will remove metallic compounds that would interfere with hydrotreating.^[1]
• Cracking to break long chain molecules in the DAO into shorter ones.
• Hydrotreating may also be employed to remove sulfur and reduce the level of nitrogen.

Research into usingbiotechnology to perform some of these processes at lower temperatures and cost is ongoing.

• Canadian Centre for Energy Information
• History of the petroleum industry in Canada (oil sands and heavy oil)
• Scotford Upgrader
• Syncrude
• Suncor
• Visbreaker

• University of Alberta Tutorial on Upgrading of Oilsands Bitumen

• Bituminous sands
• Petroleum production
• Petroleum technology
• Industrial buildings and structures
• Chemical plants

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata