Patent ID: 7293568

Claim:
A method of recovering oil from an oil bearing material comprising: providing a vessel having cone shaped bottom and containing a predetermined amount of silicon rock, wherein the silicon rock comprises at least 99 molar percent silicon and 0.393 molar percent iron; introducing a predetermined quantity of water into the vessel in such a manner as to provide contact with the rock; adding a predetermined amount of NaOH solution to the rock and water through the bottom of the vessel, thereby forming a reaction mixture; allowing the reaction to run for 10-14 hours to thereby form a reacted solution; offloading the reacted solution to a settling tank; allowing the reacted solution to settle for 2-4 days to thereby form a settled reacted solution; moving the settled reacted solution to a second settling tank for 10 days; moving the settled reacted solution to a bulk storage tank; exposing the settled reacted solution to ultraviolet radiation to form an aqueous silicon solution; diluting the aqueous silicon solution with water to form a diluted aqueous silicon solution; and flooding an oil bearing material with the diluted aqueous silicon solution to recover oil from the oil bearing material.