Oil Sands Extraction Process
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About Oil Sand
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Oil sand, also known in some areas as tar sand, is a mixture of sand, clay materials, water and an oil substance known as bitumen, or oil congealed into a slow-moving liquid. Oil sand occurs underground, usually beneath a surface layer of soil and rock, and it takes work not only to mine but to process into usable oil.
Since oil sand occurs in layers with other varying layers of separation by different types of earth, strip mining is one of the most common methods of retrieving it. The overburden is pushed aside, leaving the black grit of the oil sand exposed. The sand is then hauled in tanks and buckets outside of the mining site and into extraction factories.
Bitumen Extraction
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Once in the factory, the sand is turned into slurry, a dark mixture made by adding acidic chemicals, hot water and steam. This slurry is further refined by passing it through screens and filters that collecting outlying rocks or materials. When the mixture is pure enough, it is drawn off into primary separation vessels, or devices that draw off the bitumen. In these tanks, the bitumen naturally floats to the surface of the mixture where it can be collected and diluted. The sand, which has settled to the bottom of the tanks, is also collected and sent on to tailings oil recovery tanks that add extra chemicals like naphtha to extract even more bitumen.
Eventually, the sands are emptied and shipped off to a settling basin, along with the reclaimable water used in the extraction process. The bitumen, meanwhile, is taken from the extraction factory and run through a series of heaters, which quickly the heat the substance and flash off the water and naphtha chemicals. This is usually done in several different stages, each stage applying more heat as the bitumen becomes purer. At last, the bitumen is ready to be broken down. It is sent through several different machines that turn it into varieties of crude oil.
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Crude Oil Creation
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The bitumen sent through the device known as an LC-Finer adds hydrogen to the mix and introduces a catalyst that cause the bitumen to break down into cracked light gas oil. Other machines, called, fluid cokers, use heat to break apart the bitumen into natural naphtha, light oil and heavy oil, while extra carbon materials are burnt into granules that are collected and used for other purposes. The three streams are treated to remove extra elements such as nitrogen and then recombined to created crude oil.
There has been some controversy over the sustainability of using oil sand, especially the vast reservoir found in Alberta, Canada. Essentially, opponents of the extraction process say that more energy (in the form of natural gas) is used to refine the oil than the oil sand actually provides for homeowners. Crude oil extracted from oil sand is also claimed to be much more dangerous for the environment, expelling as much as three times more greenhouse gases than traditional oil samples.
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