Production of heavy minerals concentrate and bitumen From Oil Sands Froth Treatment Tailings

摘要

lln producing valuable heavy minerals, including zircon and those bearing titanium dioxide, into a heavy minerals concentrate (HMC), the key technical challenges involve bitumen removal from mineral particle surfaces, rejection of fine gangue and recovery of residual solvent. (Organics and fines contamination severely sours downstream heavy minerals production performance). This is accomplished in a manner that is both conducive and integral with oil sands current bitumen production and processing operations. The Company's research and development efforts are based on sophisticated variations of common unit operations, including flotation, solvent extraction and vapour-phase stripping. Experimentation has indicated optimal design parameters for these unit operations. A large-scale physical demonstration was completed with performance that has met or exceeded expectations and, after several months of operation, commercial benefits arising from these novel processes have largely been confirmed and validated. Clean HMC with attractive mineralogy is produced containing residual bitumen values sufficiently low to affect high downstream recoveries of zircon (and titania), while producing coker-feed quality bitumen.