The current state of knowledge on the fundamentals of bitumen recovery from Athabasca oil sands using water‐based extraction methods is reviewed. Instead of investigating bitumen extraction as a black box, the bitumen extraction process has been discussed and analyzed as individual steps: Oil sand lump size reduction, bitumen liberation, aeration, flotation and interactions among the different components that make up an oil sand slurry. With the development and adoption of advanced analytical instrumentations, our understanding of bitumen extraction at each individual step has been extended from the macroscopic scale down to the molecular level. How to improve bitumen recovery and bitumen froth quality from poor processing ores is still a future challenge in oil sands processing.
Adsorption of asphaltenes at the water-oil interface contributes to the stability of petroleum emulsions by forming a networked film that can hinder drop-drop coalescence. The interfacial microstructure can either be liquid-like or solid-like, depending on: i) initial bulk concentration of asphaltenes, ii) interfacial aging time, and iii) solvent aromaticity. Two techniques: interfacial shear rheology and integrated thin film drainage apparatus provided equivalent interface aging conditions, enabling direct correlation of the interfacial rheology and droplet stability. The shear rheological properties of the asphaltene film were found to be critical to the stability of contacting droplets. With a viscous dominant interfacial microstructure, the coalescence time for two drops in intimate contact was rapid, on the order of seconds. However, as the elastic contribution develops and the film microstructure begins to be dominated by elasticity, the two drops in contact do not coalescence. Such step-change transition in coalescence is thought to be related to the high shear yield stress (~10 4 Pa), which is a function of the film shear yield point and the film thickness (as measured by quartz crystal microbalance), and the increased elastic stiffness of the film that prevents mobility and rupture of the asphaltene film which when in a solid-like state provides an energy barrier for the droplets to coalescence.
Deep eutectic solvents (DESs), as a green alternative technology, exhibit great potential to recycle valuable elements from spent lithium-ion batteries (LIBs).
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