Patent ID: 9321967
Filing Date: 2016-04-26
CPC Classification: B01D,C10G

Claim Text:
1. A process for the separation of inorganic material from unconditioned oil sands, the process comprising: (a) providing a light aliphatic solvent selected from the group consisting of pentane, hexane, iso-hexane, neo-hexane, heptane and mixtures thereof, the light aliphatic solvent being capable of dissolving bitumen and dispersing asphaltenes present in the oil of unconditioned oil sands; (b) contacting unconditioned oil sands with the solvent under conditions permitting dispersion of the asphaltenes, the contacting being carried out utilizing a grinding medium, to thereby produce a mass; (c) transferring the mass obtained in step (b) into an agglomerator and adding at least one binding agent in an amount between 0.1 and 0.5 wt % of the mass, and agglomerating a significant portion of fines and coarse inorganic material from said mass and dissolving a significant portion of bitumen in the solvent, wherein the amount of solvent is adjusted to maintain dispersion of the asphaltenes, and wherein the amount of bitumen in the solvent-bitumen solution is adjusted to be less than 80%; and (d) separating the agglomerated inorganic material and non-agglomerated coarse inorganic material from said mass to obtain a slurry of organic material comprising dissolved bitumen, dispersed asphaltenes and non-agglomerated fines.