Bitumen froth is an intermediate product generated during the oil recovery operation from Athabasca oil sands. Removal of water and fine mineral solids from the bitumen froth, i.e., bitumen froth cleaning, is necessary for the subsequent bitumen upgrading operations or pipeline transport. Direct thermal processing of bitumen froth, instead of the froth treatment followed by upgrading, gives hydrothermal conditions. In this study, the combination of hydrothermal treatment, water venting and solids hot filtration was employed to clean the bitumen froth. Laboratory hydrothermal reactions were conducted at 300-420°C for 0-180 min. The filterability of fine solids was quantitatively characterized by cold filtration and hot filtration, respectively. The results show that hydrothermal treatment followed by water venting is a very effective way to remove the water from bitumen froth, which lowered the water content from 14 wt% to 0.03 wt%. Hydrothermal treatment can improve the filterability of the fine solids, thus facilitating solids removal from bitumen froth by filtration. 390°C hydrothermal treatment for 30 min was the most appealing operating condition in laboratory tests.

Filtration behavior of fine solids in bitumen froth before and after hydrothermal treatment

251st National Meeting (2016)

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