RECOVERING DEGRADED BITUMEN FROM TAILINGS

摘要

Techniques for recovering degraded bitumen from oil sands tailings can include retrieving water and degraded bitumen from the tailings and conditioning the water and degraded bitumen to produce an oil-in-water emulsion. The conditioning can include providing a pH of at least 8; dispersing the bitumen in the water; adding an emulsion stabilizer; and adding an alkaline regeneration compound. The oil-in-water emulsion can then be subjected to regenerative transport in order to regenerate the degraded bitumen in the oil-in-water emulsion and produce a regenerated emulsion. The oil-in-water emulsion has sufficient stability to remain emulsified during the regenerative transport. The regenerated emulsion can then be separated into an aqueous component including a portion of the emulsion stabilizer and a bitumen froth component including regenerated bitumen. The bitumen froth component can then be supplied to a bitumen extraction operation to produce extracted bitumen.