Ionic liquids enhanced solvent extraction for bitumen recovery from oil sands

Reporter: Zhang JianqiangAcademic Advisor： Professor Sui

Contents

• Project background and significance

• The progress report

• Subsequent experiment plan

Part 1. Project Background And Significance

• What is oil sands？ Oil or tar sands are complex mixtures of sand, clays , water, and bitumen, a “heavy” or highly viscous oil.

• Why did we do this project?Because the lack of the crude oil, then releasing the bitumen from the oil/tar sands has a practical significance.

• How? the methods have been used:

Destructive distillation

Extraction

HWEP (hot water extraction process)

Solvent/ILs extraction

Supercritical fluid extraction

Ultrasound-enhanced extraction

Microwave assisted extraction

ATP(Aostar Taciuk Process)

Fluid coking

Met

hods

• The method we used is

• Why?1.lower pollution risk than the HWEP2.Lower water consumption3.Stable in room temperature: nonvolatile, nontoxic, nonflammable … …

Solvent/ILs extraction

Part2. the Progress Report

• What have we done? Exp1. Composite solvent (ethyl acetate/n-heptane) extract the bitumen from the oil sands(3.0±0.1g) in different ratio range from 0:6 to 4:6, the total volume is 16mL.

Exp2. Ionic liquids enhanced solvent extraction for bitumen recovery from oil sands(3.0±0.1g) in different ratio range from 0:6 to 4:6, the total volume is 16mL, the volume of the ILs is 8mL. And firstly we have to calculate the distribution ratio of the ethyl acetate in n-heptane and [Emim][BF4] by GC(gas chromatograph )

Exp3. Orthogonal test

• Why did we design these three steps?

Exp1&Exp2 are to prove that the ILs can enhance the extraction of bitumen from the oil sands.

Exp3 was conducted to find the optimal conditions for the extraction.

• The experiments block diagram(take the Exp2 for example, Exp1&Exp3 are similar with Exp2)

Oil Sands [Emim][BF4] Ethyl Acetaten-Heptane

Stirring by magnetic stirrers for 30 min, 25 ,400rpm℃

Centrifuging for 5min, 7000rpm

Transfer the top layer to a clean weighted flask by pipette

Adding fresh solvent to flask

Repeat for 4 times

Distillation, Dry the bitumen in the oven at 110 for 4 hours, calculating the ℃

recovery ratio Recycle the solvents/ILs, keep the sands

• Results … …

Part 3.Subsequent Experiment Plan

• What shall we do next?• The component part of the bitumen

Bitumen

Saturates5-20%

Aromatics40-65%

Resin15-30%

Asphaltene5-25%

The asphalt is not suitable for the downstreamrefinery. Or we can say it is useless in the commercial oil.

• What will we plan to do in details? Our purpose: 1.Find the suitable composite solvent with ILs in the optimal conditions to extract the bitumen from the oil sands without asphaltene. 2.Or find the suitable solvent to release the asphalt from the bitumen after the extraction.

• How to design the Experiments? Firstly, we must understand the force between the sands and the bitumen in the solvent.

Then we can use the atomic force microscope (AFM) to calculate the force.

the mechanism of imaging by AFM

Expulsiveforce

atom

atom

Attractive force

atom

atom

• Outline: We plan to use the silica sphere (~40μm) as the sands, and silicon wafer(~15X15mm) spin-coated with bitumen or asphaltene, and then we can measure the force between the silica and bitumen/asphaltene in solvents circumstance.

• Steps: 1.Probe Particle Preparation:

The silica sphere will be glued with the two-component epoxy

How to glue the silica particle to the AFM cantilever?

• Scanning electron microscopy(SEM) photomicrograph of silicon powder

Zoom In Zoom In

2.Preparation of the substrate bitumen/asphaltene film are spin-cast from toluene solution(10mg/ml) using the spin-caster.

Silicon wafer size: 15mm×15mmSteps:1.Last for 10s at 100rpm2.Last for 20s at 3000rpm3.Last for 60s at 5000rpm

AFM image of the bitumen substrate

3. The contact angle measurements Conduct both before and after the AFM experiments to ensure that the film had neither detached from the silicon substrate nor been damaged during the AFM study.

4. Surface force measurement

The solution is injected into the fluid cell slowly with great care to avoid trapping air bubbles.

Both surfaces immerse in the solution are allow to equilibrate for 1h.

About 100 force-distance curves(10 curves at 10 different spots) to calculate the average force.

5. results and discussion

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