A new bitumen recovery technology and its potential application to remediation of oil spills

A new process of bitumen recovery from tar sand has been developed which utilizes the saponification reaction between the long-chain acids in the raw bitumen and the fresh alkaline solution with the aid of ultrasound. The bitumen recovered was found to be upgraded as evidenced by its extremely low contents of asphaltene and pre-asphaltene. The time required for separation can be greatly reduced if the spent alkaline solution (which contained a substantial amount of surfactants and still had high alkalinity) from the first phase of this work was re-used in subsequent experiments. Furthermore, a high efficiency of bitumen recovery can be achieved within minutes if a trace amount of a free radical reagent (such as H2O2) was added to the spent alkaline solution. The feasibility of applying this innovative technology to the separation of hydrocarbons from beach sands and soils contaminated by oil spills was also demonstrated in this work. The mechanism for such efficient recovery (or separation) and upgrading of hydrocarbons is discussed from the viewpoints of membrane mimetic chemistry and sonochemistry.