Patent ID: 8534359

Claim:
A process of separating oil from oil- and mineral-containing host materials, comprising: (a) contacting the host materials with at least one terpene having the formula C 10 H 16 as leachant, sufficiently to leach the oil present into the terpene phase and form terpene-plus-oil leachate; (b) removing the leachate from the host materials; (c) separating the terpene leachant from the leachate and recycling the leachant to step (a); and (d) recovering the separated oil for further treatment, wherein the host materials are selected from: (i) deposits in their original deposit location and are subject to in situ leach mining using the selected leachant and the leachate removed and passed to a processing site; (ii) materials which are open-pit-mined and transported to a processing site for steps (a) to (d); and (iii) materials which comprise oil-contaminated soil for remediation.