The Caustic Alkali-free Water Extraction Agents for Treating Inner Mongolia Oil Sands

The caustic alkali-free water extraction agents were studied for treating the oil sands excavated from Inner Mon-golia, China. Several kinds of chemical reagents were evaluated, among which sodium carbonate (SC), sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonate (SD) and sodium chloride were conifrmed as composite solutes. Their proportion was optimized by an orthogonal test. The optimum proportion of the composite agent covered 0.03%of SD, 0.50%of sodium chloride, 3.00%of SC, with the rest composed of water. The optimal operating condition was also conifrmed. The oil sands were extracted at the following optimized conditions:a treating time of 15 min, a temperature of 80℃and an extraction agent/feed ratio of 1:1, with the bitumen yield reaching more than 96%. The extraction agent after separation from the bitumen product can be recycled for reuse to carve out a good environmentally friendly route.