Clean Tar Sand Separation Performed

A great deal of effort has goneinto finding superior separation technologies for the tar sands over the pastfifty or more years.  This appears to dothe trick if it stands up in scaling and it appears that it should.

This means that processing atarsand just became both cleaner, and hugely cheaper.  The heating will be much less and the abilityto recover the active fluid is encouraging, although losses are stillinevitable.

I have to presume that the containednatural ionic solids in the tarsands will accumulate over several cycles andwill need separation also tho8ugh that is not mentioned here.

Otherwise this is promising andit will also be big news for the deposits in South America.  Tarsand mining may well have just becomecheaper and easier.

New process cleanly extracts oil from tar sands and fouled beaches

March 18, 2011

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-cleanly-oil-tar-sands-fouled.html

(PhysOrg.com) -- A new, more environmentally friendly method ofseparating oil from tar sands has been developed by a team of researchers atPenn State. This method, which utilizes ionic liquids to separate the heavyviscous oil from sand, also is capable of cleaning oil spills from beaches andseparating oil from drill cuttings, the solid particles that must be removedfrom drilling fluids in oil and gas wells.

Tar sands, also known as bituminous sands or oil sands, representapproximately two-thirds of the world’s estimated oil reserves. Canada is theworld’s major producer of unconventional petroleum from sands, and the U.S.imports more than 1 million barrels of oil per day from Canada, about twice asmuch as from Saudi Arabia. Much of this oil is produced from the Alberta tar sands.

However, the production of petroleum from tar sands causesenvironmental damage.

 Part of the damage comes fromthe storage of contaminated wastewater from the separation process in largeopen air ponds. Wastewater from the ponds can seep into groundwater and pollutelakes and rivers. In addition, the requirement for large amounts of water candeplete the supply of local fresh water resources. The Penn Stateseparation method uses very little energy and water, and all solvents arerecycled and reused.

Paul Painter, professor of polymer science in the Department ofMaterials Science and Engineering at Penn State, and his group have spentthe past 18 months developing a technique that uses ionic liquids (salt in aliquid state) to facilitate separation. The separation takes place at roomtemperature without the generation of waste process water.

“Essentially, all of the bitumen is recovered in a very clean form,without any contamination from the ionic liquids,” Painter explained. Becausethe bitumen, solvents and sand/clay mixture separate into three distinctphases, each can be removed separately and the solvent can be reused.

The process can also be used to extract oil and tar from beach sandafter oil spills, such as the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon incidents.Unlike other methods of cleanup, the Penn State process completelyremoves the hydrocarbons, and the cleaned sand can be returned to the beachinstead of being sent to landfills. In an experiment using sand polluted by theBP oil spill, the team was able to separate hydrocarbons from the sand withinseconds. A small amount of water was used to clean the remaining ionic liquidsfrom the sand, but that water was also recoverable. “It was so clean you couldtoss it back on the beach. Plus, the only extra energy you need is enough tostir the mixture,” said Aron Lupinsky, a researcher in Painter’s group.

The researchers work with a group of ionic liquids basedon 1-alkyl-3-methylimidazolium cations, a positively charged material with highchemical and thermal stability, a low degree of flammability, and almostnegligible vapor pressure, which makes recovering the ionic liquid relativelysimple. The team has built a functioning bench top model system and is in theprocess of reducing their discovery to practice for patenting.

Provided by Pennsylvania State University(news : web)