Patent ID: 8240370

Claim:
A hydrocarbon processing method comprising: injecting a steam-containing stream through an injection well into a hydrocarbon-containing reservoir; extracting hydrocarbons from the hydrocarbon-containing reservoir and withdrawing the hydrocarbons and recycle water through a production well, the recycle water formed from a portion of the steam-containing stream; introducing a reformer feed gas mixture into a plurality of catalyst-containing reformer tubes of a catalytic steam reformer and reacting the reformer feed gas mixture in a reforming reaction under reaction conditions effective to form a process gas comprising hydrogen; combusting a fuel with an oxidant gas in a combustion section of the reformer external to the plurality of catalyst-containing tubes under conditions effective to combust the fuel to form a combustion product gas and generate heat to supply energy for the reforming reaction; heating a first stream comprising the recycle water by indirect heat transfer with the combustion product gas thereby producing steam for the steam-containing stream from the first stream, the steam produced at a first pressure between 1 MPa (absolute) to 10 MPa (absolute) with a first steam quality less than 100% on a mass flow rate basis; conditioning process make-up water in a boiler feed water preparation system to produce boiler feed water from the process make-up water; and heating the boiler feed water by indirect heat transfer with at least one of the process gas and the combustion product gas thereby forming process steam, wherein the reformer feed gas mixture comprises the process steam.