Wettability of fine solids extracted from bitumen froth

Interaction between Bitumen and Fines in Oil Sands Extraction System: Implication to Bitumen Recovery

“…This visual observation indicates that fines from the poor processing ore are likely contaminated with organic species. Similar observations were reported for the fines isolated during the froth treatment: the ultra-fine inorganic solids were found to be coated with toluene insoluble organic materials similar to humic acid and asphaltenes (polar and aromatic), and the coverage is patchy rather than continuous (Kotlyar and Sparks, 1985;Chen et al, 1999;Bensebaa et al, 2000). The results of chemical analysis in Table 5 confirm that the carbon and hydrogen content in fines from the poor processing ore is substantially higher than that from the good processing ore.…”

Understanding Water‐Based Bitumen Extraction from Athabasca Oil Sands

“…This would include heavy minerals, hydrophobic clay, or coal (Baptista and Bowman, 1969;Itokumbul, 1985;Shaw et al, 1994). Some of the hydrophobic solids that report to the froth are covered with toluene-insoluble organic materials (Kotlyar et al, 1984(Kotlyar et al, , 1985(Kotlyar et al, , 1987(Kotlyar et al, , 1988Chen et al, 1999). To minimize the effect of fine solids, it is first necessary to understand the interactions of fine solids with other components such as bitumen and air bubbles.…”

Oilfield solids and water-in-oil emulsion stability

“…Chen et al observed that drying the solids extracted from bitumen froth led to a change in the three-phase contact angle between solid tablets, water, and mixtures of heptane and toluene [53]. A change in wettability would change how the solids in an emulsion were distributed between the bulk phases and the interface and hence would likely affect emulsion stability.…”

“…It has been well established that the bitumen product from Syncrude's froth treatment process contains approximately 1 to 3 vol% water in the form of droplets less than 10 µm in diameter [9,10,12,53,55]. This emulsion may be at least partially stabilized by solids and survives centrifugation at process temperatures.…”

“…This emulsion may be at least partially stabilized by solids and survives centrifugation at process temperatures. After naphtha recovery, these solids remain in the product coker feed bitumen, making up approximately 0.4 to 0.5 wt% of the bitumen [10,12,53]. The froth treatment product stream was not available for testing of the emulsion's stability, but the solids were recovered from the coker-feed bitumen for model emulsion tests.…”