Bitumen recovery from Jordanian oil sand by froth flotation using petroleum cycles oil cuts

Jordan has huge reserves of energy sources such as oil sand, oil shale, and olive cake. This work presents a part of an ongoing project to develop an appropriate low cost beneficiation technology for Jordanian oil sand. This study presents the utilization of a modified fluidized froth flotation process for beneficiation and bitumen recovery from Jordanian oil sand. This modification includes fluidization technology to replace the agitation process found in a typical flotation technology. Results of this research show that the recovery of bitumen from Jordanian oil sand reaches its maximum of 86% during the addition of 0.35 wt% of a special cut of light cycle oil as a collector. The results show that the amount of hydrocarbon content (H.C) in oil sand has a minimal impact on floatability of oil sand. In addition, the results show that increasing the temperature enhances the bitumen recovery from Jordanian oil sand. The addition of NaOH is found to have a similar effect of increasing bitumen recovery. The results show that a special cut of cycle oil increases the bitumen recovery more than the normal cut of cycle oil. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.