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US 10,711,200 B2Granted
Nanobubble aided bitumen extraction from oil sand
AssigneeSYNCRUDE CANADA LTD. in trust for the owners of the Syncrude Project as such owners exist now and in the future
InventorJun Long
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A water-based extraction process for extracting bitumen from mined oil is provided comprising providing a water-based mixture containing bitumen; and introducing nanobubbles to the mixture to attach to bitumen and, thereby, extract the bitumen from the water-based mixture, wherein a nanobubble has a diameter of less than 5,000 nm.
Claims12
A process for extracting bitumen from mined oil sands, comprising:
- mixing slurry water and mined oil sands in a slurry preparation unit to form an oil sand slurry containing bitumen droplets;
- conditioning the oil sand slurry to promote bitumen liberation from sand grains, bitumen droplet coalescence and aeration to form a conditioned oil sand slurry, conditioning forming microbubbles having a diameter of greater than 5,000 nm due to natural entrainment of air and mechanical agitation;
- subjecting the conditioned oil sand slurry to gravity separation to form a bitumen froth, a middlings stream and coarse tailings;
- optionally adding flood water to the conditioned oil sand slurry prior to subjecting it to gravity separation;
- and
- introducing nanobubbles having a diameter of less than 5,000 nm to the slurry water, the flood water, the oil sand slurry, the conditioned oil sand slurry, or combinations thereof.
3 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.