Technology status of extracting bitumen from oil sand using hot alkaline water

As an unconventional fuel resource, tar sand is widely considered to be an important supplement for oil production in the near future due to the skyrocketing price of crude oil and the increasing demand of fuel resources in the world. This paper reviewed oil sand utilization worldwide and the prospect of oil sand exploitation in China. The commercial procedures for hot water based bitumen extraction and subsequent bitumen purification were reviewed. Interactions of bitumen-minerals, bitumen-clay and bitumen-gas bubbles were discussed. The effect of various physical, chemical parameters, such as water temperature, pH value, metal ions in the slurring water and various processing additives, to the interactions of bitumen-mineral and the final recovery of bitumen is systematically summarized. The reviewers believed that finding optimized technique for the hot water based bitumen extraction and separation will be a potential future research focus, and believed that application of Atom Force Microscopy and synthetic utilization of various extraction methods will play an important role in enhancing oil sand bitumen extraction.