Kansas City Plant inventors, in conjunction with Millennium Technologies Inc., have jointly developed a new process to recover heavy oil from oil sands. Much of the world’s oil reserves are in the form of oil sands and in the western part of the United States alone, there is an estimated heavy oil reserve of nearly 100 billion barrels. This new process not only has the potential to decrease the United States’ dependence on foreign oil but also uses an environmentally friendly, non-aqueous process well suited for water scarce western regions.

This two phase process involves the use of a renewable, generally recognized as safe (GRAS) solvent, followed by a liquid or supercritical carbon dioxide rinse to remove the extraction solvent from the sand. Both the extraction and rinse phases are recovered using closed–loop processing to eliminate losses. The new process expands upon a previous collaboration that was awarded a FLC Technology Transfer Award in 2006.

Earlier this year, METROSAGE LLC. commercially introduced a new model-based software tool that helps facilitate the development of coordinate measuring machine (CMM) inspection programs according to new optimization techniques. For example, it is intended that, given certain parameters of the CMM system, an inspection strategy will be generated that will result in the smallest inspection cost under constraints of time and/or required accuracy. Furthermore, users could use the tool to choose among several CMMs which one would most economically produce adequate measurements. Finally, this tool will enable the user to integrate measurement technology and sound business practice, by providing estimates of the impact of CMM metrology on product profitability.

METROSAGE LLC, a small company headquartered in Volcano, CA, partnered with DOE’s Kansas City Plant (KCP) through a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) to undertake development of a new software product toward advancing CMM programs for product acceptance and certification. The develop results will benefit US commercial enterprises, Federal government entities, and US defense activities by providing a more efficient and cost effective tool than is currently available. The combination of model-based technology and expertise from the partnership in tolerance analysis and dimensional metrology greatly accelerate the development.

METROSAGE LLC is a leading provider of inspection analysis and simulation software and services for factory applications. METROSAGE delivers automated simulation solutions focused on the improvement of quality and predictability in the manufacturing process. Improving ROI through optimized inspection planning and validation, METROSAGE applies advanced science and technology in an easy to use package to drastically improve the effectiveness and cost/benefit of quality assurance.

DOE’s Kansas City Plant (KCP) is one of the nation’s most diverse low-volume, high-reliability production facilities and is at the heart of the NNSA nuclear security organization. KCP provides high-tech production services to government agencies with high-quality requirements.