| In the development of a non-aqueous bitumen extraction process, a major obstacle is solvent loss due to hydrocarbon attachment to the reject sand grains. A proposed solution to this problem is to wash (i.e. remediate) the oil-contaminated sand grains with water and surfactants. This research is focused on developing a protocol to evaluate the performance of particular surfactant types and water chemistry; emphasis was placed on using minimal amounts of water to recover the residual oil. To start, a series of jar tests were conducted (using heptane and hexadecane as solvents) to study the phase behaviours of oil-water-surfactant ternary systems. This was followed by the development of a new washing protocol for the purpose of evaluating remediation performance. Finally, the correlation between overall remediation performance and the oil-water interfacial tension was discussed. |
