P25 オイルサンドからのビチューメンの超音波照射分離における混合ガス導入の検討(Poster Session)

概要

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20% of Canada's oil sand is located on the surface of the ground. These oil sands are taken by means of open-pit mining. About 10% of oil sands consist of bitumen. Bitumen is used as fuel energy, and it is necessary to separate bitumen from oil sand at high efficiency. Main industrial processes to separate bitumen from oil sand are treatments using hot water and steam in rotating drums. These treatments consist of two processes. The first is the bitumen separation from oil sand and the second is the bitumen flotation from aqueous solution to the solution surface. In this study, we investigated the optimal combination of ultrasound and gases to improve the separation efficiency and the yield of bitumen from oil sand in the hot water process. A sample of oil sand from Alberta, Canada was used in this experiment. The suspension of oil sand was prepared by mixing oil sand and sodium hydroxide with distilled water in the flask. In bitumen flotation, the suspension was prepared by mixing bitumen and sodium hydroxide. These suspensions were subjected to a gas flow of air, argon (Ar) or carbon dioxide (CO_2). Then the suspensions were treated using sonication for 15 min. After the treatment, the separated bitumen floating on the surface was collected and weighed after drying. We found that the Ar gas was effective in the recovery of bitumen during sonication whereas CO_2 gas was effective for the flotation for bitumen.
2012-11-09