Centrifugal recovery of solvent-diluted bitumen from oil sands

Abstract

Abstract An experimental centrifugal filtration technique is developed for the measurement of diluted bitumen volume extracted from oil sand mineral particles. Liquid volume is obtained from measured evolution of light transmission profiles during centrifugation. Tests are performed on different oil sands ores and solvent to bitumen ratio (S/B) of 3.0. The highest liquid volume extracted is obtained for the high-grade oil sand ore. Experimental data are fitted with a model for liquid flow through a porous medium with variable saturation to obtain the liquid retention curve and the hydraulic conductivity functions for different oil sands ores. These functions are used in a model to predict the liquid extraction efficiency in a large scale continuous filtering centrifuge for the separation of oil sands mineral particles from solvent diluted bitumen.