Oil Sands

What it is

Oil sand is a mixture of bitumen, sand, water and clay. Today's declining production from traditional oil fields and high oil prices make the exploitation of unconventional sources of oil, such as that contained in huge oil sand deposits viable.

The exploitation of oil sands is particularly active in Canada, where vast deposits are excavated to recover the heavy oil compounds that they contain.

How it works

Huge quantities of oil sands are excavated from just below the surface using mammoth earth moving machinery. This material is processed with hot water to separate the bitumen from the sand.

The bitumen is cleaned by removing fine clay particles and water and the thick bitumen is diluted with naphtha and stored. The mixture is then delivered via pipeline to an upgrading unit where the solvent is recovered and recycled back to the extraction area.

The bitumen is upgraded to a commercial grade crude oil using a hydrogen conversion process to break the heavy hydrocarbon molecules into lower molecular weight components.These upgraded crude oils are suitable feedstocks for refineries.

In other processes the bitumen is heated in furnaces and sent to coke drums where coke is removed. The hydrocarbon vapors from the coke drums are sent to fractionators where they are separated into naphtha, kerosene and gas oil that are further treated in hydroprocessing units, as in a typical refinery.

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