Patent ID: 7201804

Claim:
A process for cleaning a material comprising the step of: charging a quantity of a material-to-be-treated selected from the group consisting of drilling fluids, reactor sludges, oil-contaminated soils, oil contaminated water, used oil, hydrocarbon fuels, tar sands, tanker bottoms, refinery bottoms, oil pit residues, refinery waste streams, refinery residue streams, paint wastes, and polymer wastes, where the material-to-be-treated comprises water and water soluble aqueous components, a non-aqueous fluid, and solid materials into an interior of an inner tube of a tubular extraction vessel comprising: an upper portion including an outer tube, an middle tube, and the inner tube; a semi-permeable membrane; and a lower portion, pressurizing an extraction fluid consisting of CO 2 to a desired high pressure to produce a pressurized extraction fluid and heat; charging a quantity of the pressurized extraction fluid to a plurality of interior sites of the tubular reactor until the fluid is at or above its critical point, contacting the material-to-be-treated with the pressurized extracting fluid under conditions of temperature and pressure sufficient to maintain the fluid at, near or above its critical point to produce a treated material comprising the extraction fluid, the non-aqueous fluid and the solid materials; concurrently, removing water and water soluble components via the semi-permeable membrane into the lower portion of the tubular extraction vessel to produce an aqueous product, forwarding the treated material into a first separation vessel comprising an interior, a treated material inlet, a fluid outlet and a solids outlet having a venturi valve, removing the solids materials from the first separation vessel through the venturi valve to a solids storage container to produce a solids product, removing a fluid comprising the non-aqueous fluid and the extraction fluid from the first separation vessel and forwarding the fluid to a second separation vessel having a fluid level sensor, separating the fluid in the second separation vessel into a used extraction fluid and a non-aqueous fluid product, transferring the non-aqueous fluid product to a fluid storage container; and transferring thermal energy from the pressurizing step to the concurrent removing step and the separating step to warm the aqueous product and to warm the non-aqueous fluid product to improve the overall power requirements of the process.