Microwave-Assisted Removal of Cyclohexane from Oil Sands Gangue

Abstract

This work demonstrates that microwave (MW) heating can be an effective means for removing cyclohexane in oil sands gangue when water is present and acts as a heating agent. Reconstituted gangue samples containing the same amounts of sand and clay particles, residual bitumen, and cyclohexane but with different amounts of water were studied in MW heating experiments. MW heating was rapid, and cyclohexane removal was completed in only 8 min. This is because MW heating is selective and energy is directly absorbed by the water molecules, not by the other gangue components, and is later transferred to nearby cyclohexane molecules to vaporize them. It was found that the cyclohexane removal efficiency increases with increasing water content in the gangue. Obtained results showed that 6 wt % water is adequate to remove 12 wt % of cyclohexane initially present in the reconstituted gangue samples. It is worth noting that oil sands ores normally contain about 3–4 wt % of connate water. This means that addition of only a small amount of water suffices for the solvent removal process. For the first time, we report the application of a gas chromatography technique to determine the residual cyclohexane contents in the reconstituted gangue samples and found that such a technique exhibited reasonable accuracy. The selective MW heating increases the feasibility of commercializing the lab scale, nonaqueous bitumen extraction process using cyclohexane.

Microwave-Assisted Chemical Ablation (MA-CA): A Novel Microwave-Assisted Tissue Ablation Procedure—Preliminary Assessment of Efficiency

“…Moret et al [2] focused on the use of MW for the extraction of organic contaminants in food, as well as the determination of hydrocarbon contaminants. Another domain of interest has been the removal of cyclohexane in oil sands gangue [3]. Further examples are the use of MAE for the removal of bioactive compounds in herbal or food samples [4,5].…”