Syncrude Canada Ltd.

Syncrude Canada Ltd. in Trust for the Owners of the Syncrude Project As Such Owners Exist Now and in the Future

Murphy Oil Company Ltd.

Mocal Energy Limited

Imperial Oil Resources

Nexen Corporation

Aec Oil Sands, L.p.

Canadian Oil Sands Limited

Petro-canada Oil and Gas

Canadian Oil Sands Commercial Trust

Comocophillips Oilsands Partnershipii

Samson Ng

Jonathan Spence

Robert Siy

Barry Bara

Jun Long

Waldemar Maciejewski

Kamal Hammad

Jason Schaan

Michael Lipsett

Teddy Kwong

The invention is directed to a process for extracting bitumen from poor oil sand ore involving mixing the poor oil sand ore with heated water to produce a slurry, and conditioning the slurry to yield a poor ore stream. In a separate train, good oil sand ore is mixed with heated water to produce a slurry, and conditioned to yield a good ore stream. Both the conditioned poor ore and good ore streams are combined in specified proportions to yield a blended slurry which is then fed to a primary separation vessel to produce primary bitumen froth.

Post-conditioning oil sand slurry blending for improved extraction performance

A process for extracting bitumen from oil sand, comprising: mixing oil sand with process water to produce an oil sand slurry containing bitumen, sand, water and entrained air; conditioning the oil sand slurry; optionally flooding the conditioned oil sand slurry with flood water to dilute the slurry, if required; introducing the slurry into a primary separation vessel wherein separate layers of primary bitumen froth, middlings and sand tailings are formed; removing a portion of the primary bitumen froth from the primary separation vessel and recycling the portion of primary bitumen froth to that step of the process upstream of the primary separation vessel to join and mix with the feed stream moving to the primary separation vessel; and thereafter retaining said feed stream in said primary separation vessel to produce primary bitumen froth.

Primary froth recycle

An aqueous aerated oil sand slurry is conditioned in a pipeline and then spun within an elongate vessel of circular cross-section, to cause bitumen droplets in the slurry to coalesce. This increases the probability that the droplets will become aerated by contact with air bubbles. The slurry is then subjected to separation of the sand and bitumen.

Apparatus and process for coalescing bitumen in an oil sand slurry

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Sherwood Park, Canada

Samson Ng