Chapter 1
1. Introduction
This chapter briefly introduces the basic industrial background and
motivations, project objectives and thesis outline.
1.1. Background and motivations
Canadian oil sands represent a huge amount of oil reserves. The estimated
amount of bitumen is 600 billion barrels, which is four times the oil reserves in
Saudi Arabia [1],[2]. However, oil sands are unconsolidated deposits of very heavy
hydrocarbon bitumen and require multiple stages before refining, which increase
production costs.
About 60 billion barrels of oil sands can be recovered by surface mining
process Figure 1.1 shows general scheme for oil sands processing using
water-based extraction processes [3]. Each box in the figure identifies a unit plant
operation. First oil sands from surface mining are transported to the extraction
plant. Oil sands are mixed with hot water to form slurry. In flotation process, the
corresponding slurry containing water, bitumen, sands and air bubbles, is left for
separation. Tailing slurry from extraction plant enters water management unit.
Recovered bitumen and recycled water are injected back to extraction plant.
Bitumen rises to the surface to form a froth, which contains 30% water (as a
stable w∕o emulsion) and fine solids up to 10%. In froth treatment unit, froth is
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