Method of utilizing dispersant chemical combined with nanobubbles and agitation for accelerated dewatering and oil stripping of tailings

Abstract

A process of dewatering oil sands/coal tailings includes generating nanobubble water, mixing a chemical dispersant into the nanobubble water to form a nanobubble-dispersant mixture, adding tailings to the nanobubble-dispersant mixture to form a nanobubble-dispersant-tailings mixture, and agitating the nanobubble-dispersant-tailings mixture to form an agitated nanobubble-dispersant-tailings mixture having a solid portion and a liquid portion. The solid portion is thereafter separated from the liquid portion. The agitation may be a centrifugal motion or shaking motion to agitate the nanobubble-dispersant-tailings mixture The chemical dispersant may be sodium hydroxide dispersant for asphaltenes and the volume of the tailings added may be substantially equal to the volume of the nanobubble water generated. An oil layer may further be skimmed off the liquid portion a polymer clarifier may also be added to the liquid portion. The process may be applied to achieve accelerated tailings processing for rapid and economic environmental remediation.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.