Post-conditioning oil sand slurry blending for improved extraction performance
AssigneeSYNCRUDE CANADA LTD. in trust for the owners of the Syncrude Project as such owners exist now and in the future
InventorsJonathan Spence, Jun Long, Robert Siy, Samson Ng
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The invention is directed to a process for extracting bitumen from poor oil sand ore involving mixing the poor oil sand ore with heated water to produce a slurry, and conditioning the slurry to yield a poor ore stream. In a separate train, good oil sand ore is mixed with heated water to produce a slurry, and conditioned to yield a good ore stream. Both the conditioned poor ore and good ore streams are combined in specified proportions to yield a blended slurry which is then fed to a primary separation vessel to produce primary bitumen froth.
Claims16
A process for extracting bitumen from poor oil sand ore comprising:
- mixing the poor oil sand ore with heated water to produce a first oil sand slurry, and conditioning the first oil sand slurry to yield a first conditioned stream;
- separately mixing good oil sand ore with heated water to produce a second oil sand slurry, and conditioning the second oil sand slurry to yield a second conditioned stream;
- combining the first and second conditioned streams in specified proportions to yield a blended slurry;
- and
- subjecting the resultant blended slurry to gravity separation in a primary separation vessel to produce primary bitumen froth.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.