A METHOD FOR EXTRACTING BITUMEN FROM AN OIL SAND FEED STREAM

摘要

The present invention provides a method for extracting bitumen from an oil sand feed stream (10), the method comprising at least the steps of: (a) providing an oil sand feed stream (10); (b) contacting the oil sand feed stream (10) with a liquid (20) comprising an aliphatic hydrocarbon solvent thereby obtaining a solvent-diluted oil sand slurry (30); (c) depositing the solvent-diluted oil sand slurry (30,35) as a filter cake (32) on a filter medium (31) and filtering the solvent-diluted oil sand slurry (30,35), thereby obtaining a solids-enriched stream (50) and a filtrate (60), wherein during the filtering the pressure above the filter cake (32) is at least 1.7 bara; and (d) lowering the pressure of the solids-enriched stream (50) to below 1.2 bara.