While hot or warm water processes are used to extract bitumen from Canadian oil sands, the application of these methods to the processing deposits found in the Western United States, notably Utah, has not been commercially successful, the researchers noted, because of the consolidated nature of the deposits and the high viscosity of the bitumen.

In a paper published in the ACS journal Energy & Fuels, the Penn State team found that a multiphase system consisting of a sand and clay slurry, an ionic liquid layer, and an organic layer containing the bitumen can be formed by simply mixing the components. More than 90% of the bitumen is released from the sand, but only in successive extractions.

Water is not used in this stage of the separation, but relatively small amounts are used to separate entrained IL from the sand and clays. The water is easily removed from the IL by distillation, because the latter has a negligible vapor pressure under these conditions. There was no detectable IL contamination of the residual sand and clays after washing.

Resources

• Paul Painter, Phillip Williams and Aron Lupinsky (2010) Recovery of Bitumen from Utah Tar Sands Using Ionic Liquids. Energy Fuels, Article ASAP doi: 10.1021/ef100765u