Extraction

COSI 2009-02 Oil Sands Surface Chemistry Studied by IR Visible Sum Frequency Generation Vibrational Spectroscopy (Chou & Gray)

COSI 2010-04 Kinetics of Solvent Recovery from Extracted Oil Sands Tailings (Murray R Gray, Phillip Choi & Qi Liu)

The use of solvents for extraction of bitumen is attractive because no wet tailings are produced, however, the recovery of solvent must be very efficient to avoid environmental impact and to make the process economic. This research project will determine the best composition of solvent and recovery conditions to achieve acceptable residual concentration in the dry tailings. The important variables that will be studied are fines content of the ore, solvent composition, humidity, and temperature. The kinetics of solvent removal and the equilibrium sorption behavior in the residual asphaltenes will be measured in order to provide data for the design of recovery processes.

Murray R Gray, Phillip Choi, and Qi Liu
Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Alberta
Three year project to March 2013