CA2939495A1 - Oleophilic separation to replace bitumen froth flotation of oil sand slurry and fft - Google Patents

Abstract

An oleophilic separation apparatus and process for replacing bitumen froth flotation with a more efficient high quality bitumen production process that is ten times faster, operates at 30 degrees centigrade or lower and does not require caustic process aid. It features tumbling oleophilic balls or oleophilic rods in a driven rotating agglomerator cage with apertured cylindrical wall that hangs in closely spaced multipe wraps of endless oleophilic metal or plastic rope from internally heated rollers to produce high purity warm free flowing bitumen product from oil sand slurry or from tailings pond fluid fine tailings feed. The rods or balls transfer from the feed to their surfaces bitumen paste with a viscosity similar to conventional ketchup or tooth paste. This paste extrudes through the bottom of the apertured cage bottom to the oleophilic rope wraps for conveyance to internally heated rollers above the drum to produce a free flowing high quality bitumen product. The aqueous effluent tailings flow out of the drum past the wraps and may be stored for a few months in a working tailings pond to settle solids and to concentrate bitumen in the resulting fluid fine tailings for subsequent recovery at ambient temperature of more bitumen to achieve very high total bitumen recovery. The process features short processing time, low thermal energy requirements and minimal materials handling. It may lead to bitumen extraction right at the mine face to reduce: 1) the cost of producing bitumen, 2) the environmental impact of bitumen production and 3) the cost of purchasing carbon credits resulting from its low energy requirements.

Description

Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
OLEOPHILIC SEPARATION TO REPLACE BITUMEN
FROTH FLOTATION OF OIL SAND SLURRY AND FFT.
RELATED APPLICATIONS
Patents granted to or applied for in Canada and in the USA by Jan Kruyer of Thorsby, and previously from Edmonton are related to the present patent and describe more than 40 years of oleophilic separation technology development. Very few patents applied for in Canada or in the USA by others are related to oleophilic separation as de-fined in this patent. Most patents applied for or granted for oil sand separation are based on the concept of bitumen froth flotation, which is different from oleophilic separation.
For more details, see : "Recent patents granted to or pending by the current inventor"
near the end of the present specifications.
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to process devices and methods for processing mined oil sand slurries and oil sand tailings pond fluid fine tailings (FFT).
Accordingly, it involves the fields of process engineering, chemistry and chemical engineering.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
A detailed description of oil sand, tar sand and bituminous sand deposits, and of commercial processing these ore deposits to produce bitumen product is provided in prior patents of the present inventor. Up to now, only the oil sand deposits in the Fort McMur-ray, Alberta area have been and are surface mined in any major way to commercially produce bitumen that can be refined to useful hydrocarbon fuels or made into other useful products. Unlike other bituminous deposits, the Fort McMurray oil sand deposit consists of sand and silt grains covered by a thin envelope of water with bitumen between the wa-ter wetted grains. Dispersed clay fines often reside in the water envelope that surround Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
each sand grain. In addition to the above components, oil sands also contain fatty acids, such as naphthenic acid, for example.
Current Alberta commercial mined oil sands plants surface mine the oil sand ore which may contain, for a medium grade ore,10% bitumen, 5% water and 85% solids by mass. Sufficient water, and some caustic soda are currently added to the mined ore to commercially enhance the subsequent preparation of an oil sand slurry at 50 degrees cen-tigrade or higher. The slurry then may contain, for example, 7% bitumen, 70%
water and 23% solids. Commercial separation of that slurry results in a valuable bitumen froth product plus an aqueous effluent of separation that will contain sand, silt, finer minerals, water, and some unrecovered bitumen. The commercial bitumen froth normally is de-aerated and then contains about 60% bitumen for average grade oil sand, with the rest of the product being water and fine minerals. Solvent extraction or diluent centrifuging is used next to remove water and fine solids and yield a bitumen product that is suitable for upgrading to a useful hydrocarbon. Similar to the traditional method of making soap, which involves reacting caustic soda with grease (a fatty acid), the current commercial mined oil sands plants add caustic soda to the slurry to produce detergents from fatty ac-ids in the ore. These detergents help in oil sand slurry preparation and in the subsequent slurry separation by bitumen froth flotation.
During froth flotation the oil sand slurry, in the presence of detergents , is frothed with air to cause bitumen flecks - adhering to small air bubbles - to rise to the top of flo-tation vessels as a bitumen froth. This froth is skimmed off the top and becomes the product of separation after clean up. The aqueous effluent or tailings of separation, con-taining water, sand, silt, clay and bitumen, are impounded in tailings ponds for decades and currently are not processed commercially to recover any discarded bitumen.
This impounding behind carefully engineered barriers is very expensive and mostly prevents the tailings from entering the environment. However, as happens in hydrocarbon contain-ing landfills, the unrecovered hydrocarbon (bitumen) in time is altered by microbial ac-tivity and releases methane into the surrounding air unless captured. In landfills this me-thane may be collected since methane is a valuable fuel. Collecting methane from tailings ponds is not done because of the large tailings pond surfaces. When entering the air, me-thane is known to be twenty times as environmentally potent as carbon dioxide.

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Bitumen froth flotation is a long duration process which may take up to 6 hours (360 minutes) of processing time to yield, from mined oil sand slurry, a useful bitumen froth product for further cleanup and/or upgrading. The carbon footprint of a commercial mined oil sands plant is very large and the use of caustic, used during froth flotation, hin-ders natural compaction of its aqueous effluent. Hence, the extraction tailings cannot be discarded to the environment but are stored in very large tailings ponds that may remain of environmental concern for many decades to come.
Oleophilic separation development was started in 1975 to overcome the environ-mental impact of bitumen froth flotation, to speed up the recovery of bitumen from oil sand slurry, to retrieve discarded bitumen and to do away with long duration tailings ponds. It is now ready for field testing and commercial development.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Oleophilic separation does not alter the mining of oil sand ore, except that caustic soda normally is not needed in the production of oil sand slurry for oleophilic separation.
Preparation of oil sand slurry for oleophilic separation can be faster than for froth flota-tion since the agglomerator, drum or cage, which is at the heart of oleophilic separation, is less demanding of slurry produced than is froth flotation. Eliminating caustic soda in oleophilic separation speeds up tailings settling and opens the way for using short dura-tion small tailings ponds instead of large long duration ponds now needed for commercial bitumen froth flotation plant effluents. Small ponds will allow, in a matter of months, after sand and silt have settled to the bottom and residual bitumen has concentrated in the upper levels, effective recovery of bitumen not captured before when separating oil sand slurry by oleophilic separation. Normally this does not required heating of the settled ef-fluent. Total bitumen recovery from mined oil sand then becomes very high. The current commercial mined oil sand plant operators do not recover bitumen from tailings ponds because there is no process, other than oleophilic separation, capable of doing so at a po-tential profit. However, oleophilic separation is a technology not owned by governments nor by oil sand operators, and this has significantly slowed down its commercial devel-opment.

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DISCARDED BITUMEN
A few decades ago, bitumen froth flotation of oil sand slurry achieved about 90%
bitumen recovery from average mined oil sand ore. For a plant producing 100,000 bar-rels of bitumen per day, the mined ore contained 111,111 barrels of bitumen and 11,111 barrels of bitumen were discarded per day, representing 4 million barrels of bitumen lost per year at each commercial plant. That is a lot of unrecovered valuable bitumen. Most is still stored in the existing ponds and is subject to microbial activity on residual bitumen that results in methane release to the air.
Today, bitumen froth flotation averages 95% bitumen recovery from average mined oil sand ore. For a modern plant now producing 200,000 barrels of bitumen per day, the ore contains 210,526 barrels of bitumen and 10,526 barrels are discarded per day (again 4 million barrels of unrecovered bitumen per year at each commercial mined oil sand extraction plant).
Oleophilic separation of bitumen from a tailings pond does not require slurry preparation. It is less expensive than mining and processing new oil sand ore and can be very profitable, provided that oleophilic separation technology is used. It is the only pro-cess with proven fast and high recovery of the lost bitumen to date.
Oleophilic separation has proven in parallel field pilot plant studies that it is the only process that can efficient-ly retrieve discarded bitumen from the tailings ponds at low cost. Doing so will result in the production of a very large amount of bitumen due to the many years of fluid fine tailings (FFT) accumulation in current tailings ponds. Fresh tailings that are a few years old will yield high quality bitumen and mature tailings a few decades old may yield a lower quality bitumen as a result of pond microbial activity. Bitumen matured for many years in a pond is still a valuable hydrocarbon that can be converted into useful products.
OLEOPHILIC SEPARATION AS A PRIMARY SEPARATION PROCESS
An even greater commercial advantage can be obtained if oleophilic separation replaces bitumen froth flotation of oil sand slurry altogether. The reason is, while the res-

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idence time for commercial bitumen froth flotation is about 6 hours (360 minutes), pilot plant studies have shown that oleophilic separation requires between 2 and 15 minutes to achieve the same degree of slurry separation but with better purity of bitumen product.
Reducing total processing time from 360 minutes to, for example, 10 minutes will result in a time reduction factor of 36 with the added advantage of reduced apparatus and ener-gy costs and superior bitumen product.
This potential reduction in commercial processing time makes it commercially at-tractive to consider producing and processing oil sand slurry right at the mine face. Do-ing so will eliminate the need for abrasive slurry pipeline transport from mine to central processing plant and for abrasive tailings pipeline transport back to the mined out area for settling and dewatering, and it will eliminate long duration tailings ponds that have been known to leak toxic liquid into the surrounding landscape. These, and subsequently here-in described additional benefits will result in a much lower carbon footprint for bitumen extraction, fewer environmental concerns, and more cost effective commercial mined oil sand processing.
BASIC PROCESS DIFFERENCES
Bitumen froth flotation needs specific chemical feed conditioning and careful process control to convert the oil sand ore into a suitable slurry and to cause bitumen con-tained in that slurry to be dispersed into tiny droplets or flecks at an elevated temperature.
Twenty years ago, that temperature was close to 100 degrees C. Today, that temperature has been reduced to 50 degrees. At lower process temperatures, froth flotation becomes unprofitable due to degradation of percent bitumen recovered. Large amounts of com-pressed air at high pressure are needed to form a multitude of small air bubbles during pipeline transport of oil sand slurry, and more compressed air at lower pressure may be needed in the separation vessels of froth flotation. Careful pH and chemical control is needed for bitumen to air adhesion and the froth flotation process steps require several process recycle loops to achieve the desired product purity and recovery, as shown in Figure 8. A multitude of small air bubbles, each with small flecks of bitumen on their surfaces, slowly rise through a downward flowing slurry to reach the top of froth flotation

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vessels. Bitumen droplets that are weighted down too much by mineral fines leave the process with the tailings and are not captured as product. The more processing time and air is spent on flotation, the higher the bitumen yield but at the expense of time, energy and larger and greater numbers of separation vessels. Considerations of economy normal-ly limit froth flotation time to 6 hours.
The bitumen product of froth flotation is high in air and water content and must be deaerated before it can be purified by solvent extraction or by dilution centrifuging.
This adds a bit more to the 6 hours of commercial processing needed to obtain the desired 95 percent recovery of good quality bitumen from an average mined oil sand ore.
OLEOPHILIC SEPARATION
Similar to bitumen froth flotation, oleophilic separation also requires a water based feed for separation. But to recover bitumen from the feed, caustic soda is not needed for almost all grades of oil sand and neither is bitumen to air adhesion needed.
Instead, the oil sand slurry is tumbled inside a rotating cage (agglomerator) in the pres-ence of oleophilic balls or oleophilic rods. For short cages oleophilic balls are needed but when the cage length is more than 50% greater than its internal diameter, oleophilic rods may be used, which are much easier to obtain and more economical to produce than balls per volume (See Figure 18).
To avoid thinking that an oleophilic agglomerator for separating bitumen from oil sand slurry or from FFT is similar to a ball mill or a rod mill for grinding mineral ore, the following differences should be understood. Ball and rod grinding mills are very heavy and only use dense solid balls or dense solid rods of abrasion resistant metal to crush and break up ore and gangue by attrition into small particles. This is followed in subsequent froth flotation equipment to partition crushed gangue from crushed ore by mineral partic-ulate froth flotation. Neither the balls nor the rods have to be oleophilic to function in a ball or rod mill. Ball and rod mills require large amounts of power to crush mined rocks.
None of this is similar to oleophilic separation of oil sand slurry or fluid fine tailings (FFT). Unlike the power required to turn a ball mill or a rod mill, an agglomerator cage

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demands much less power (see Figure 18) and ball or rod mills do not do any oleophilic separation.
During agglomerator cage rotation oil sand slurry feed or tailing pond fluid fine tailings feed intimately mix with oleophilic balls or oleophilic rods tumbling inside the rotating cage. This causes the balls or rods, in a few minutes, to collect on their surfaces nearly all the bitumen from the feed in the form of adhering viscous bitumen phase paste at the operating agglomerator cage temperature. This paste has a viscosity similar to con-ventional ketchup, peanut butter or tooth paste. The bitumen paste accumulates on the tumbling balls or rods in increasing thickness and transfers from tumbling ball to turn-bling ball or from tumbling rod to tumbling rod until arriving at the apertured agglomera-tor cage wall along the cage bottom. There, the paste extrudes through the apertured cage wall and between oleophilic wraps for adhesion to the oleophilic cable wraps covering the cage bottom quadrants. Aqueous phase effluent outflow from which bitumen has been removed flows out of the cage bottom quadrants past the rope wraps until bitumen accumulation on the wraps becomes so great that it progressively prevents such aqeous outflow along the revolving cage circumferential wall in the direction of wall movement.
For a counter clockwise rotating agglomerator cage, most of the bitumen reduced aque-ous phase leaves the cage through its left bottom quadrant and most of the bitumen paste adheres to rope wraps along cage right bottom quadrant for conveyance to internally heated roller(s) above the cage to produce a free flowing warm bitumen product of sepa-ration. For a clockwise rotating cage, most of the bitumen reduced aqueous phase passes out of the cage bottom right quadrant.
Thus the bottom half at least of the agglomerator cage apertured circumferential wall is covered by an oleophilic sieve in the form of multiple closely spaced oleophilic rope wraps, that allow aqueous phase leaving the cage to pass though narrow spaces be-tween the wraps along the cage bottom until the spaces are closed off by bitumen paste adhering to the wraps. This closing off by bitumen paste progresses in the direction of apertured wall movement and may result in a thick cold bitumen paste coating on the wraps conveying collected bitumen to the heated roller(s) above the agglomerator cage.
When that bitumen coating on the wraps becomes too thick, cage rotation speed must be increased to allow sufficient bitumen reduced aqueous effluent to leave through cage bot-

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torn instead of spilling out of one or both top quadrants of the cage. Hence, cage RPM is one area of control and process optimization. When the aqueous outflow is found to be too fast, process residence time must be increased. This is a design issue that can be overcome by adding an extra rope wrap between adjacent hoops , by selecting larger di-ameter wraps or in some cases by increasing paste viscosity through lowering feed tem-perature. A temporary solution to solve excessively short feed residence time is to recy-cle the aqueous effluent back to the agglomerator until the problem is overcome. When the aqueous outflow is slow, bitumen recovery is high but at the expense of processing time. Increasing cage RPM deminishes the amount of bitumen paste accumulating on the cable wraps for a given feed, which also influences the rate of aqueous phase outflow.
Internally heated rollers mounted above the agglomerator heat the bitumen paste on the oleophilic sieve (rope wraps) and cause it to flow off the oleophilic sieve and roll-ers as a warm, free flowing, liquid product that does not contain air and is low in water.
Condensing low pressure steam inside the rollers often is used to heat the rollers to pre-vent overheating of bitumen or rope wraps. Hot water or warm oil may be used as well to internally heat the rollers. Overheating the wraps may evaporate water in bitumen on the wraps and may deposit minerals on the roller and wrap surfaces, which is not desirable.
OTHER ADVANTAGES
The bitumen product of oleophilic separation of oil sand slurry or of tailings pond FFT may be cleaned by washing it with water and reprocessing it by another oleophilic separator cage to remove trapped hydrophilic minerals from the bitumen product The resulting bitumen product normally is much superior in quality to current deaerated commercial bitumen froth. Bitumen loss resulting from such water washing is very low.
Feed processing by oleophilic separation is much faster than by bitumen froth flo-tation, as detailed in the tabulated result detailed in the present patent specifications and the bitumen product quality is superior. Another benefit of oleophilic separation is that normally the feed does not have to be heated above ambient temperature (e.g.
room tern-perature). FFT obtained from large tailings ponds (normally at 12 degrees centigrade year round) does not need to be heated in winter or summer, provided the FFT
is pumpa-

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ble. For that reason a patent was granted to the present inventor for an efficient low tur-bulent hydraulically driven immersible pump for cold FFT (containing viscous bitumen) pumping at high pressure from a tailings pond for processing.
Oleophilic separation is very energy efficient because feed volume always is much greater than bitumen product volume and specific heat of feed always is higher than specific heat of product. The product only is normally heated to suit subsequent processing but the feed is not heated or only sparingly. None of these thermal energy ef-ficiencies are possible with bitumen froth flotation, which requires 50 degrees C in all its flow and recycle loops. This difference will compute into major energy savings and ma-jor carbon credit savings when oleophilic separation is used commercially instead of bi-tumen froth flotation.
BRIEF DESCRIPTIONS OF THE DRAWINGS
Figure 1 is a drawing of a small pilot plant that was used to recover bitumen from mined oil sand ore by oleophilic separation after previous extensive bench scale testing.
Figure 2 is a spread sheet of two performance run results with the original pilot plant of Figure 1 and of a performance run after major apparatus and process improve-ments.
Figure 3 is a drawing of a larger oleophilic separation pilot plant that was used to separate bitumen from tailings pond sludge (fluid fine tailings or FFT) shipped by high-way tankers from Fort McMurray to Edmonton. After successfully processing about 40,000 kg of FFT, this pilot plant was skid mounted and shipped to the field adjacent to the tailings pond of a commercial oil sands extraction plant and there obtained the same separation results as in Figure 3.
Figure 4 is a flow diagram of a large bitumen froth flotation field pilot plant that was constructed and modified after preliminary testing to recover bitumen from tailings pond FFT for comparing the results of bitumen froth flotation with the results of oleo-philic separation in the field.

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Figure 5 is a comparison table of test results obtained when processing FFT by bi-tumen froth flotation compared with oleophilic separation.
Figure 6 is a table of oleophilic separation results compared with results of bitu-men froth flotation of Syncrude type oil sand beach ore. This ore is considered to be one of the most difficult mined oil sands to separate. Single stage oleophilic separation in this table is compared with bitumen froth flotation using standard three stage pot tests devel-oped by the oil sands industry to correctly simulate commercial bitumen froth flotation.
Figure 7 is a design footprint diagram of a typical commercial bitumen froth flota-tion mined oil sands plant for processing 8000 tonnes of mined oil sand ore per hour at 50 degrees C.
Figure 8 is a flow diagram of the design bitumen froth flotation commercial plant of Figure 7 showing vessels, pumps, cyclones, recycle flows residence times and power requirements.
Figure 9 illustrates a proposed concept described in the present patent of replacing a remote central large commercial bitumen froth flotation plant with multiple oleophilic separators located adjacent to mine faces using working tailings ponds of short duration to maximize bitumen recovery, reduce fresh water requirements for extraction and make mined oil sands extraction more profitable and environmentally acceptable.
Figure 10 illustrates a typical oleophilic separator using roller chain and sprockets to drive rotation of an oleophilic separator agglomerator cage with closely spaced multi-ple wraps of endless rope on the cage to collect cold viscous bitumen phase onto the wraps for conveyance to heated rollers to produce a free flowing warm unaerated bitu-men product of superior quality with high bitumen recovery.
Figure 11 illustrates the use of multiple wraps of endless rope with rope redirect-ing mechanisms between rollers and also between cage and roller to prevent rope wrap from rolling off the end of roller(s) or cage. Two endless ropes and two redirecting mech-anisms are used with the cage of Figure 11B. Using two endless ropes is a convenient method to prevent cage tilting as it rotates.
Figure 12 illustrates a typical oleophilic separator using gears on hydraulic motors to drive rotation of an oleophilic separator agglomerator cage.

Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
Figure 13 illustrates an inside view of an oleophilic separation agglomerator cage partly filled with oleophilic balls or oleophilic rods of three densities, which various den-sities are indicated by line thickness in the dawing Wrap of endless rope (dashed line) is shown to contact the full circumference of bottom half of apertured cage circumferential wall between adjacent hoops (only one hoop shown). The hoops are tied to the agglom-erator end walls (not shown) by structural rods to form an apertured circumferential cage wall to accept closely spaced rope wraps on cage surfaces between adjacent hoops.
Figure 14 A illustrates the use of bobbins on a mechanical rod to equidistantly spaced hoops and rope wraps between adjacent hoops of an agglomerator cage to control aqueous phase flow out of the cage. Figure 14 B shows a mechanical rod welded to hoops and with tabs welded to the mechanical rod to equally space rope wraps between adjacent hoops to control the outflow of aqueous phase from the cage and hence to con-trol the residence time of feed in the agglomerator cage. Mechanical rods are attached to the end walls (not shown) or pass through holes in the end walls for attachment. Figures 14C and D illustrate typical tabs suitable for welding to mechanical rods or pipes.
Figure 15 A shows ribs to assemble into hoops that may be welded to mechanical rods or pipes as shown in Figure 15B. To save on the cost of steel and on the cost of rib cutting, the size of the inside radius of each rib is the same as the size of its outside radi-us. This is accomplished by shifting the center of rotation as shown in Figure 15A, by numbered tags 163 and 164, which means that the inside radius cut of one rib is also the outside radius cut of the next rib, as shown in the cutting pattern of Figure 15C. Since long commercial agglomerators may require many large diameter ribs this will reduce the cost of producing agglomerators. Notches (162 of Figure 15 A) are cut into the rib inside radius for welding to pipes or rods but that cutting is easily done as part of continuous abrasive water cutting of ribs.
Figure 16 provides approximate horsepower calculation for driving agglomerator cages shorter than 1.5 times cage internal diameter. Oleophilic balls normally are used in short cages but oleophilic rods are normally used in longer cagess for reasons of econo-my.

Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
Figure 17 identifies cage quadrants for counter clockwise and clockwise turning agglomerators. Hoppers for introducing feed into an agglomerator preferably are located in or close to quadrant 4.
Figure 18 provides information for use of sealed conventional steel pipe as oleo-philic rods inside an agglomerator longer than 1.5 times its inside diameter.
It also iden-tifies plastic pipe for use as oleophilic rods and describes the use of balls and of golf balls loaded with steel inserts for use as oleophilic balls in agglomerators of shorter length.
Figure 19 illustrates potential replacement of conventional mined oil sand condi-tioning drums with rotating grizzlies to digest mined oil sand with condensing steam and remove rocks, gravel and clay lumps from grizzly end whilst digested wet sand, silt and bitumen pass out of the grizzly between grizzly bars to subsequently mix with water and thus produce oil sand slurry feed to an agglomerator for oleophilic separation.
Figure 20 illustrates why axial feed distributors have now been replaced by feed hoppers along top quadrants of agglomerator cage surfaces not covered by rope wraps.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES
Figures lA and 1B are historical drawings of a small scale pilot plant that was used to recover bitumen from mined oil sand by oleophilic separation. The drawings il-lustrate the equipment that was used to develop oleophilic separation after its potential for commercial oil sand processing had been confirmed by several years of extensive bench scale testing. Mined oil sand ore entered a rotating drum called a conditioning drum, or slurry tumbler, where the ore was mixed with warm water to produce a slurry.
In early testing, caustic soda was added to the mix since that was, and still is, the conven-tion in commercial oil sand extraction. Later, caustic soda was eliminated since it did not appear to help in oleophilic separation of high and medium grade oil sand slurries.
Only for the very low grades of oil sand ore, normally commercially bypassed and not processed, did sodium hydroxide appear to have some use. Separation temperature was gradually lowered as test work with the pilot plant of Figure 1 proceeded. A
screen, at the exit of the conditioning drum, removed gravel and then the slurry was pumped to a rotat-ing agglomerator. This agglomerator was a 30 cm. diameter drum, 6 cm. long, filled 80%

Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
with a bed of half inch (13 mm) steel balls with an exit screen that prevented balls from leaving the agglomerator drum rotating at about 6 RPM. Slurry feed entered the rotating drum and balls, mixing with the feed, stripped finely dispersed bitumen particles from the slurry and returned enlarged bitumen particles to the mixture before it left the drum as the exit stream. This exit stream spilled onto an endless mesh belt that was made from oleo-philic longitudinal and perpendicular strands with mesh opening size about 4 mm square.
The revolving belt collected the enlarged bitumen phase particles onto the oleophilic strands whilst the aqueous phase of the slurry passed through the mesh belt openings.
Augers under the belt removed sand, silt and water from the separator as illustrated in Figure 1B. Rubber rollers squeezed the mesh belt and removed the resulting bitumen phase product. The oil sand feed, the oversize, the tailings and the bitumen product were measured by load cells and were analyzed immediately in an upstairs analytical laborato-ry as each test run proceeded. For the analyses, conventional soxlet extraction apparatus was used to weigh the extracted minerals. Rotovacs were used to remove toluene from the warm extraction flasks, followed by weighing pure bitumen left in the tared flasks.
Water collected in the apparatus graduate was recorded. This obtained accurate and complete analytical data of minerals, bitumen and water content of each sample within 8 hours after completing each pilot plant run. The results of our laboratory analyses were routinely checked for accuracy against commercial laboratory results of identical samples taken at the same time.
Figure 2 is a spread sheet of performance run results with the pilot plant of Figure 1, giving the results of three performance runs to give an indication of progress made dur-ing an 2 year program of testing and apparatus improvement. As shown in the previous Figure 1 A , the oleophilic separation pilot plant program used only one stage of separa-tion and not three stages as is common for bitumen froth flotation. Bitumen recovery from slurry in this one stage pilot plant was 70.0%, 99.9% and 96.0% for the three per-formance runs here tabulated. The ore that produced these slurries contained respective-ly: 6.8%, 12.3% and 9.1% bitumen. The product from these three runs respectively contained 44%, 49% and 46% bitumen. An encouraging result from this test program was that slurry processing took only 4.5, 9.1 and 9.7 minutes respectively for the three performance runs.

Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
The positive results and the short processing time obtained well before the process had developed to the point of combining agglomeration with oleophilic screening in one apparatus, indicated the need for continued research. As shown in Figure 8, commercial bitumen froth flotation of oil sand slurry normally uses three stages of separation and takes at least 6 hours (360 minutes) of processing. The average oleophilic separation time was 7.8 minutes for the performance test runs tabulated in Figure 2. As development proceeded, separation time progressively became shorter without performance degrada-tion.
Bitumen recovery in performance run 25 was very high for low grade 9.1 % bi-tumen content oil sand ore as a result of several minor changes that were made in the flow diagram of Figure 1. In previous test runs, fresh water was used to produce and di-lute the oil sand slurry. In process development that led up to performance run 25, pro-cess water containing residual bitumen and fine particulate minerals was recycled back continuously to make slurry. Only enough fresh water was added to replace water con-tamed in moist tailings that were augured out of the bottom of the separation effluent tank, using a vertical Moyno pump with long exposed auger to remove moist tailings.
Fresh water added to produce slurry only replaced water that left the process in moist tail-ings augured out of the bottom of the tailings tank under the oleophilic sieve. This was achieved by replacing the tank and augers of Figure 1 with a deep cone tailings tank with a vertical Moyno pump in the bottom and a moist sand conveyor below the Moyno pump to return any run off water back to the process. The recycle liquid at the end of run 25 had the same bitumen and fines concentration as at the beginning of the run.
Stirred aqueous recycle liquid stored from previous test runs was used as process water recycle at the start of run 25. The only bitumen that left the process was bitumen contained in the moist tail-ings.
The results of performance run 25 suggested that tailings ponds could, in time, be eliminated if oleophilic separation were commercialized. Permission was not granted by AOSTRA (Alberta Oil Sands Technology Research Authority) to publish these results in the scientific literature until recently. The inventor had consistently refused to assign his technology to the Alberta government in return for potentially large government research contracts. To have assigned his patents would have left him with no future as a researcher Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
or manager and could very well have stopped any further oleophilic separation develop-ment.
Figure 3 is a drawing of an oleophilic separation pilot plant that was used to sepa-rate bitumen from tailings pond sludge. Mention should be made here that pond sludge (fluid fine tailings or FFT) mainly differs from oil sand slurry in being very low in sand content and high in mineral fines content. The original name of "sludge" was changed by the oil sands industry to "fluid fine tailings" or FFT, possibly to make it more appeal-ing in the scientific literature. Figure 3 includes a tabulation of the results of the perfor-mance run of oleophilic separation that processed 8000 kg of FFT (fluid fine tailings) us-ing an agglomerator, that was 1.108 meter in diameter and 0.095 meter (9.5 cm.) long.
Optimum processing time was 1.54 minutes. This test program more than exceeded the required performance criteria stated at the beginning of the contract. Bitumen recovery from FFT was 85% and the product contained 58% bitumen, 15% mineral and 27% wa-ter. For processing times shorter than 1.54 minutes bitumen recovery dropped below 85%. When the bitumen product of Figure 3 was washed with fresh water and then pro-cessed by single stage oleophilic separation, bitumen loss was less than 1%
and the bitu-men product then contained 61% bitumen, 10% mineral and 29% water. Assays showed that the mineral in the reprocessed product was mainly oleophilic, which suggested that water washing is a convenient method of beneficiating any valuable oleophilic particulate minerals contained in oil sand bitumen product, such as rutile or zircon.
The results in Figure 3 are similar to those obtained in the previous pilot plan pro-gram at an earlier date for processing oil sand slurry but which then averaged 7.8 minutes of processing time detailed in Figure 2. Comparing these historical test results gives an indication of development improvements made in oleophilic separation during many years of continued research. Noteworthy is that the 85% bitumen recovery in 1.54 minutes was achieved using a single oleophilic separator.
Figure 4 is a flow diagram of the bitumen froth flotation field pilot plant that was used to recover bitumen from tailings pond FFT in the comparative field test program described with Figure 3. The flow diagram was taken from the Suncor (Collins and Webster) handout describing the field study that was not published in a scientific journal but was only presented at a Fort McMurray local CIM meeting. This bitumen froth flota-Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
tion field pilot plant required five stages of processing. It included air blowing to drive off carbon dioxide to change the pH of the FFT feed from 6.8 to 8.0 before froth flotation would work and after doubling the FFT water content. Then, an oleophilic separator was added at the tail end of the bitumen froth flotation pilot plant to remove air and sufficient water from the froth product before it was suitable for dilution centrifuging.
In contrast, the bitumen product of oleophilic separation (detailed in Figure 3) was dilution centri-fuged as produced without the need for deaerating or dewatering.
Figure 5 is a comparison table of the field test results of processing FFT by oleo-philic separation and of processing FFT by bitumen froth flotation in the comparative field test program of Figures 3 and 4. Noteworthy is that oleophilic separation took less than 2 minutes of processing time and bitumen froth flotation took 26 minutes to achieve the same 85% bitumen recovery. The amount of effluent leaving oleophilic separation was 90% of the FFT feed entering the separator, indicating that the amount of effluent produced was less than the amount of FFT feed processed. Bitumen froth flotation of FFT, because of the need for dilution water, yielded an effluent equal to 152%
of the FFT entering the field pilot plant. A commercial pond to receive that effluent would have needed to be 52% larger than the commercial pond that contained the original FFT feed.
Another difference between results of oleophilic separation and results of bitumen froth flotation of FFT in these field tests was in the quality of the bitumen product. From single stage oleophilic separation the product contained 58% bitumen. The bitumen product from five stages of separation in the field pilot plant of Figure 4 contained 24%
bitumen; less than half as good as the product of oleophilic separation of the pilot plant of Figure 3. Unfortunately the $3 million oleophilic separation pilot plant was never re-turned to the inventor.
Figure 6 is a table comparing oleophilic separation with bitumen froth flotation of Syncrude type oil sand beach ore, which was studied with the assistance, under AOSTRA
contract, of consultants of the Alberta Research Council, Dr. Dean Wallace and Ms.
Deborah Henry. Syncrude type beach ore was tested in this comparison since it is con-sidered to be the most difficult mined oil sand to separate. Pilot plant oleophilic separa-tion was carried out by staff of the present inventor and was closely observed by Wallace and Henry. Parallel pot test were conducted by Wallace and Henry using the identical oil Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
sand ore. The results of the comparison tests are shown in the table of Figure 6. The ole-ophilic separation pilot plant used one stage of separation. Pot tests had been developed by the mined oil sands industry and were considered to be representative of commercial three stage froth flotation at the time when these comparison tests were conducted. As shown in Figure 6, the pot tests collected three products of bitumen froth flotation: pri-mary tailings, secondary tailings and a toluene wash. Total bitumen recovery by the pot tests was18% and total bitumen recovery by oleophilic separation was 67%
representing an almost 4 fold improvement. The product quality from the pot tests was 5.4%
bitumen and from oleophilic separation was 43.5% bitumen representing an 8 fold improvement.
Clearly, single stage oleophilic separation results were superior to three stage bitumen froth flotation pot tests of the same low quality ore.
Figure 7 is a design footprint diagram of a typical modern commercial bitumen froth flotation mined oil sands extraction plant for processing 8000 metric tons of mined oil sand ore per hour as designed by staff of the University of Saskatchewan with advice and help from industrial oil sand consultants. For the three stages of froth flotation, pri-mary separation occupies 1250 square meters, secondary separation 2500 square meters and tertiary separation 6400 square meters. Then, to minimize the environmental impact of extraction tailings, the tailings thickeners occupy 48,600 square meters, much greater than the extraction plant itself. A commercial plant, that large, requires a large amount of real estate and necessitates the use of central processing of oil sand slurry and long dis-tance expensive slurry pipelines to bring oil sand slurry to the central extraction plant.
These pipelines are fabricated from abrasion resistant steel and need to be rotated about 3 or 4 times per year and normally have less than two year lifespan. The resulting extrac-tion tailings then have to be removed by slurry pipeline from the central plant to tailings ponds some distance away when sterilization of bitumen in ore bodies by covering the ore with tailings ponds is not allowed. All this requires much and complex equipment and major investment.
Figure 8 is a flow diagram of the bitumen froth flotation plant of Figure 7.
Note-worthy is that this modern plant design requires 26 (twenty six) very large vessels, 40 (forty) large capacity pumps and 20 (twenty) hydro cyclones to process 11,000 cubic me-ters of slurry per hour, all at a constant temperature of 50 degrees centigrade. The separa-Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
tion vessels alone require 450 kw of power, not counting the 40 pumps nor the high pres-sure air compressors needed to inject flotation air into slurry pipeline feeding the plant, nor steam needed to keep the complete process at a constant 50 degrees C. This drawing shows that several recycle loops are needed to obtain enough bitumen product of ac-ceptable quality and to minimze loss of bitumen to the effluent tailings.
Figure 9 introduces an option where oleophilic separation can simplify commer-cial mined oil sand extraction and make it more cost effective. The Figure illustrates a concept herein proposed of replacing central large commercial bitumen froth flotation plants, such as the plant design of Figures 7 and 8, with a series of oleophilic oil sand slurry separators located adjacent to oil sand mine faces. This proposal involves the use of short term working tailings ponds to significantly increase total bitumen recovery and to produce non or less toxic tailings water for reuse right on site for more oil sand slurry production or for disposal.
Thus current commercial plants use 6 hours of 50 degree centigrade aerated froth flotation in very large central extraction plants with feed from many km of long abrasive slurry pipelines followed by pipeline disposal of abrasive tailings effluent slurry. That costly approach to oil sand processing should in time be replaced with multiple oleophilic separators that require less than 10 minutes of ambient temperature processing to achieve the same or better bitumen recovery and better product quality close to the mine face. It is a concept well worth considering to reduce the cost and environmental impact of mined oil sand extraction. Illustrative of this concept is Figure 9. Oil sand slurry (1) is separated near a mine face using an oleophilic separator (2). Aqueous effluent (3) of oleophilic sep-aration flows into a temporary tailings pond (8) and after a few months sand, silt and some fines will have settle to the bottom (9) of the pond (8) since tailings pH will be close to neutral in the pond (8). Bitumen product (4) of the separator (2) is pumped or gravity fed to the inlet of a pump (14) where it is augmented by fresh water (7) entering the pump (14). Then the bitumen product (4) and the fresh water (7) are pumped by the pump (14) into a liquid pipeline (15) to cause flow of liquid (16) in turbulent flow through the pipeline (15) on its way to a central bitumen processing plant.
Turbulent flow in the pipeline (15) causes dispersion of bitumen (4) into water (7) and results in the transfer of hydrophilic minerals from the bitumen phase to the water phase in the turbu-Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
lent mixture flowing in the pipeline (15). An emulsifier (not shown) may be added to the pump inlet to assist in dispersing the bitumen (4) if required. As the thus dispersed mix-ture arrives at the central bitumen processing plant, an oleophilic separator may be used to separate liquid leaving the pipeline into a water washed bitumen product and an efflu-ent water containing most of the hydrophilic minerals that were present in the bitumen (4) that entered the pipeline (15). A demulsifier (not shown) may be added to the dispersed pipeline mixture before or during oleophilic separation at the central bitumen clean up facility, if needed.
A few months later, or a year or more later, the same or a different oleophilic sep-arator (5) may be used to separate the upper layers (10) of the pond. Sand, silt and some fines of the effluent (3) of prior separation will have settled to the bottom (9) of the pond (8). Bitumen content in the FFT (10) upper pond layers will have increased dramatically as a result of sand, silt and fines settling. These upper pond layers may then be separated by the same or by an alternate oleophilic separator in providing a feed (6) for entry into that separator (5). The resulting bitumen product (12) of FFT separation then flows into the same or similar pump (14) as a feed mixture (13) with added water (7), as was done months or a few years previous, to produce a turbulent mixture (16) flowing in the pipe-line (15) of wash water (7) mixed with bitumen product (12) of the oleophilic separator (5).
Since bitumen is recovered from both oil sand slurry and from the resulting FFT
after settling, the net result of this proposal will be very high total recovery of bitumen right near the mine face, yielding a high purity bitumen product at the central bitumen clean up plant (not shown). The aqueous effluent (11) of the second separation will be very low in bitumen content and low in relatively coarse particulate mineral content and will be more environmentally friendly than the contents of the tailings ponds of the pre-sent commercial oil sand extraction plants since caustic was not used and more bitumen has been recovered. The aqueous effluent (11) leaving the separator (5) may then be con-sidered for use directly to produce more oil sand slurry near the mine face for oleophilic separation, since oleophilic separation is very tolerant of fines.
Alternately, this effluent may be centrifuged, cycloned or stored in a short duration pond for a few extra years be-fore use or acceptable environmental disposal. The absence of caustic reaction products Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
in that effluent will make it less environmentally sensitive and particulate fine minerals mud of that pH neutral effluent will settle relatively fast to encourage water reuse or rec-lamation.
The oleophilic separators (2 and 5) of Figure 9 are described in more detail, for example, in Figures 10, 12 and13.
Separating mined oil sand slurry to recover bitumen by froth flotation, followed by separating the resulting effluent a few months or a few years later by oleophilic sepa-ration to increase total bitumen recovery from oil and ore is one of the claimed objectives of this present patent.
A number of other devices were developed since 1975 to augment oleophilic sep-aration for which patents are pending or were granted to the present inventor to make oleophilic separation more effective. These included: 1) a confined path hydro-cyclone to more effectively water wash and remove rocks, gravel and coarse sand from oil sand slurry, 2) a hydraulically driven high pressure positive displacement pump to transfer FFT in laminar flow to prevent dispersion of bitumen when pumping fluid fine tailings from tailings ponds, 3) much time was spent on developing long lasting oleophilic sieves and this led to the use of multi wraps of endless rope to replace mesh belts that were fragile and problematic. 4) the redirecting of rope wraps to prevent them from roll-ing off cages or rollers was another development. The last two developments eliminated the use of fragile mesh belts and replaced these with long lasting steel or plastc rope wraps to cover commercial welded separator cages fabricated from metal ribs to form hoops for the cages, and use long oleophilic rods instead of oleophilic balls for tumbling inside long commercial cages during separation.
The herein described use of closely spaced rope wraps on agglomerator cage bot-tom quadrants and beyond, serve to very closely control aqueous phase outflow from the cage to precisely control the residence time of feed in the cage for processing. This was an issue not detailied in previous patents.
One oleophilic separator design is detailed in end view in Figure 10 comprising an agglomerator cage that is driven to rotate by means of roller chains (31), connecting sprockets (32) mounted on each cage end wall (22), and with sprockets (34) on a drive shaft mounted in bearings on the frame (29) of the separator. Lever arms (33), with bear-Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
ings on both ends, provide tension in the roller chains (31) to keep the agglomerator cage from swinging as it rotates. An air or hydraulic cylinder (35) at both cage end walls (22) between lever arm (33) and separator frame (29) may be used to position the cage for stringing cable wraps during construction but also may carry some of the weight of the cage and its contents during separation. However most of the weight of the cage and its contents is normally carried by a multitude of closely spaced rope wraps (illustrated in Figure 11 B). One wrap only (25,26) is shown in the Figure 10 draped in tension over rollers (27,28) above the cage. One or more holes with cover plates (35) normally are provided in the cage end walls (22) to allow loading of the agglomerator cage with oleo-philic rods or oleophilic balls. Balls are used when the cage length is less than 1.5 times its internal diameter, but oleophilic rods are cheaper than balls and these are to be used in large commercial separators when the cage internal length is greater than 1.5 times its internal diameter. Oleophilic rods do not tumble well in cages that are shorter in length than 1.5 its internal diameter. Feed (20) for separation enters the cage through a hopper (21) above one of its top quadrants not covered by cable wraps. This provides for easy entry of feed into the agglomerator cage without disturbing movement of rods or balls in the cage interior. Normally a feed hopper (21) is used the full length of the cage for uni-form distribution of feed into the cage. The cage axis should be level and the feed hopper (21) also is level to evenly distribute the feed (20) into the agglomerator cage. During op-eration, aqueous effluent (23) of separation leaves through the apertured cage bottom quadrants through voids between the rope wraps (25,26) along the bottom cage quadrants and most of it through the left bottom quadrant for a counter clockwise turning cage.
Viscous bitumen paste (not shown for clarity of Figure 10 but is shown in Figure 13) is pushed by gravity and by tumbling oleophilic rods or balls out of the cage mostly through the apertured bottom right quadrant of the counter clockwise rotating cage. It adheres to the oleophilic cable wraps along the bottom cage quadrant. This bitumen paste (shown in Figure 13 as tag 85) is conveyed by the wraps to internally heated rotating rollers (27) above the cage. Sometimes a bit of bitumen falls off the wraps when the cage rotates too slowly but it is collected in a catch basin (24) and is recycled back to the feed hopper (21). Bitumen paste adhering to the cable wraps (25) is conveyed to the surfaces of the internally heated rollers (27) above the cage. Heating of these cages (27) normally is by Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
internally condensing low pressure steam and the condensate normally is returned to the boiler that generated the steam. Heat from those rollers heats up the cold viscous bitumen paste on the rope wraps and converts it into a free flowing good quality bitumen product that flows off the cable wraps (25) to become the product of separation (30).
In Figure 10 a cold roller (28) is used to cool down the cable wraps. Such a cold roller may or may not be required, in which case the cold roller (28) could also be a heated roller, properly en-closed. Both the hot rollers (27) and the cold roller (28) are shaft mounted in bearings securely mounted to the separator frame (29) to be able to completely or at least partly support the weight of the agglomerator cage and its contents plus the weight of the rollers (27,28) and their contents. The cold roller (28), which may be kept cool by flowing cold water inside the roller (28) serves to cool down the rope wraps (26) sufficiently before these return to the agglomerator cage, but only if that is needed to prevent bitumen loss with the effluent (23) leaving the cage. Alternately, a bank of air fans impacting cool air on the cable wraps (26) may serve to cool the cable wraps if required to prevent warm bitumen from leaving the agglomerator cage with the effluent (23)..
Figure 11 shows the previously patented concept of using rope wraps in place of mesh belts. In this case two endless ropes are used to prevent the agglomerator cage tilt-ing during cage rotation. Figure 11 B shows how the cable wraps are redirected to pre-vent wraps from rolling off the cage or roller. It shows a cage completely hanging in rope wraps supported from well mounted rollers in framed bearings above the cage. In previous patents, the concept of using rope wrap spacing to control outflow of aqueous phase from the agglomerator cage or drum was not detailed nor claimed.
Method to prevent rotating cage from swinging is not shown in Figure 11 B but it often uses a lever bar shown in Figures 10 and 12 for that purpose.
Alternately two roller chains at each cage end wall, with the appropriate number of sprockets to keep the roller chains tight, may be used to prevent cage swinging.
Figure 12 is very similar to Figure 10, except that the cage is driven by hydraulic motors using gears (55) that match with gears (52) securely mounted on the cage end walls (50) at both agglomerator cage ends. Lever arms (57) at both cage end walls with pivot points (56) at the separator frame (51) and bearings (53) at each cage end wall pre-vent cage swinging and provide mounting for the required gears(55) driven, for example, Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
by hydraulic motors. One or four hydraulic motors may be used. Two are shown on each end wall in the Figure. The lever arms (57) each are provided with a frame (54) to mount the hydraulically driven gears (55) and to provide mounting of an air or hydraulic cylin-der (59) to the separator frame (51). This cylinder (59) serves to position the elevation of the agglomerator cage when stringing rope wraps between the cage and the rollers (47,48) above the cage. It may also serve to reduce some stress in the rope wraps during operation, if needed, but normally the rope wraps are strong enough and high enough in number to eliminate the need for additional cage support. After passing the heated rollers (47) the rope wraps (49) return to the cage cylindrical wall. Aqueous effluent (43) mostly leaves through the bottom left cage quadrant and a chute (44) may be provided to direct the effluent (43) as it exits. As in Figure 10, the agglomerator of Figure 12 is provided with one or more holes in each end wall to insert or remove oleophilic rods or oleophilic balls and are closed with cover plates (58). Similarly, as is shown in Figure

10, aqueous effluent (43, 44) leaves the separator- mainly from the bottom left quadrant of Figure 12.
A recycle catch (45) may be provided for recycling any bitumen and associated aqueous effluent back to the feed (40) inlet (41). Cold bitumen paste (not shown here but shown in Figure 13) is conveyed by rope wraps (46) of Figure 12 to heated rollers (47) that serve to heat the viscous bitumen phase adhering to the cable wraps (46) resulting in a free flowing unaerated bitumen product (42). As in Figure 10, in Figure 12 a cold roller (48) may be used to cool the rope wraps leaving the heated rollers but such a cold roller is not always required. Usually a bitumen product receiver (60) may provide some temporary storage of bitumen product (42) but is not always needed.
Figure 13 provides for an inside conceptual view of an oleophilic separator as it starts to rotate, filled with oleophilic rods of three densities (70, 71 and 72) The denser rods (70) tend to concentrate along the right bottom quadrant of the agglomerator cage (73). The medium density balls (71) tend to gravitate towards the middle of the cage and the light balls (72) tend to occupy the upper regions of the agglomerator cage. During rotation, the rods intermingle with each other and with the feed (74) inside the cage, which feed during operation enters the agglomerator cage from the feed hopper (75) at the top. Feed (76) enters when the agglomerator cage (77) rotates and establishes a liquid level in the cage. Often there is air space (78) near the top of the cage inside that may be Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
controlled by liquid level sensing to prevent spillage of feed from overflowing over the top of the cage (77) . A seal (79) may be provided and rope wrap (81) location and direc-tion between agglomerator cage and heated rollers above the cage may be designed to minimize such overflow. This may be done by placing the rollers closer together in the horizontal direction and further apart in the vertical direction. The oleophilic rods tumble inside the cage (77) as the cage rotates and mix with the feed(74) inside the cage to strip bitumen phase paste out of the feed (74) for adhesion to the oleophilic rods (70,71,72) or balls. Then the aqueous effluent (82) of the feed, after enough bitumen has transferred to the balls or rods, leaves through the bottom quadrants of the cage. With a counter clock-wise rotating cage, most of the effluent (82) leaves the cage through its left bottom quad-rant. Bitumen phase (83) of the feed in the cage that has transferred to the oleophilic balls or rods extrudes out of the cage and can be seen to adhere to the cable wraps along the bottom right quadrant (73). At times, a small amount of water and bitumen fall off the cage along the right bottom quadrant and this may be collected in a receiver (84) un-der the bottom right quadrant for return to the feed hopper (75) instead of becoming part of the aqueous effluent (82). Viscous bitumen (85) adhering to the rising rope wraps (80) is conveyed to the external surfaces of internally heated rollers (86) where the viscous bitumen turns into a low viscosity high quality free flowing bitumen product (87) that may be collected in a product hopper (88) to become the bitumen product (89) of oleo-philic separation. A Squeeze roller (90) may be mounted, if needed, adjacent to the last heated roller to strip remaining warm bitumen from the rope wraps before these contact a cold roller (91), which roller is one method for cooling down the rope wraps before re-turning to the agglomerator cage wall (92), if that is needed. Ambient temperature water circulating through the cold roller normally is sufficient. Air cooled rope wraps do not readily release thin layers of viscous bitumen from rope wraps when impacted by cold aqueous effluent (82) leaving the cage. Thus a cold roller (91) may not be needed in many cases. Often ambient air circulating by the wraps or from a bank of air fans serves the same purpose as a cold roller. However a roller (91) , if grooved to accept and keep rope wraps aligned, in some cases is useful after the heated rollers (86).
Viscous bitumen paste (85) with a consistency of cold ketchup, peanut butter or tooth paste is extruded out of the agglomerator cage along its bottom right quadrant by Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
oleophilic balls or rods. It is very difficult to observe the movement of bitumen or oleo-philic rods or balls within an agglomerator cage because, if a glass or plastic wall were used to observe such movement, bitumen would quickly coat that clear wall and thus prevent such observation. However, observing bitumen phase leaving an apertured wall with revolving balls in a rotating experimental cage gives a strong indication that heavier balls inside the cage extrude viscous bitumen through the cage wall apertures to the rope wraps. Bitumen adheres to the oleophilic sieve (rope) surfaces whilst aqueous effluent passes through the sieve apertures( between adjacent wraps) to disposal. Along the bot-tom right quadrant, the amount of bitumen adhering to the rope wraps (oleophilic sieve) progressively increases in the direction of cage rotation and often is very significant. For a counter clockwise rotating cage, most of the aqueous phase passes through the left bot-tom quadrant and that flow of aqueous phase progressively diminishes in the direction of sieve movement along the bottom cage quadrants as bitumen accumulates on the sieve (rope wrap) surfaces and progressively closes the sieve apertures (space between the wraps) in the direction of cage rotation. As shown in Figure 15, the cage wall may be as-sembled from 90 degree ribs to form hoops. In this particular case, mechanical rods (93) pass through the ribs to tie the ribs to cage end walls, as shown in Figure 14 A with bob-bins on the mechanical rods to space the hoops. However, as shown in Figure 14 B bob-bins are not needed when mechanical rods or pipes are welded directly to the hoops or ribs and tabs or pins are welded to or attached to the longetudinal mechanical rods or pipes to equidistantly space the wraps. Examples of such tabs are illustrated in Figures 14 C and D
Figure 14 A illustrates one way of placing rope wraps (111) on mechanical struc-ture of an agglomerator. In this case, bobbins (113) on mechanical rods (112) between cage end walls space the hoops (114) of an agglomerator cage. The mechanical rods (112) are in tension and pass through holes in agglomerator hoops (114) and through holes in the end walls where the mechanical rods are terminated with, for example, nuts.
Rope wraps fill the space between hoops with enough void space between the wraps and between wraps and hoops to allow controlled outflow of aqueous phase effluent for a de-sired feed processing rate (residence time) in the agglomerator.

Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
Figure 14 B illustrates details for another way of constructing an agglomerator with apertured cylindrical wall. Again, two end walls (not shown)are provided with cov-er plates for holes in the end walls that are used to insert oleophilic balls or oleophilic rods into the agglomerator cage. In this case, mechanical rods, pipes or flat bar (115) are welded to spaced hoops(117) between end walls, and to end walls to form - like a cage -the apertured cylindrical wall of the agglomerator. Tabs (118), illustrated in Figures 14C
or 14D are equally spaced between hoops, and welded to the rods, pipes or bar, to proper-ly space the multiple wraps. These tabs may be half washers, as illustrated, or one third or quarter washers with appropriate holes for welding to the rods, pipe or bar to tightly or properly space the waps, as required.
The agglomerator cage is driven to rotate but hangs in multiple wraps of one or two endless ropes from rollers above the cage that support all or part of the weight of the cage and its contents. The multiple wraps, closely and equally spaced in groups of one, two, three, four, or more, contact the cage bottom quadrants between adjacent hoops.
The wraps serve the multi purpose of (A) supporting part or all of the weight of the cage and its contents, (B) controlling the rate of outflow between rope wraps of aqueous efflu-ent, (C) collecting on the wrap surfaces bitumen paste of such separation, and (D) con-veying the collected bitumen paste to internally heated rollers above the cage for produc-ing a warm free flowing bitumen product of separation. Many of these purposes and their effect on oleophilic separation have not yet been disclosed or claimed in previous patents of the present inventor.
Shown in Figure 14 B are one of the mechanical pipes (115) and two hoops (117) with nine rope wraps (116) between hoops. To prevent bunching up of wraps (116) be-tween hoops (117) and thereby creating uneven spaces between adjacent wraps, tabs (118) may be welded to the mechanical pipe (115) to separate the nine wraps into three groups of three wraps. Of course, other grouping may be used to achieve the objective of controlling the outflow of aqueous effluent and hence control the residence time of feed in the agglomerator cage. Two types of tabs are illustrated in Figures 14 C
and D. Tabs (118) like Figure 14 C would be used on pipes or round rods and in simplest form would be washers cut in half or in quarters, for example. For square or rectangular cross section mechanical rods, tabs similar to the one illustrated in Figure 14D could be used. To pre-Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
vent cage ovality, hoops would likely not be rolled from bar - but would be assembled from ribs - to minimize internal hoop stresses resulting from rolling bars and from weld-ing to rolled hoops; and to save on cage construction cost.
When oleophilic rods are used instead of oleophilic balls in the agglomerator cage, the rods are almost as long as the cage and this reduces the number of hoops needed for cage construction since, unlike balls, rods can not pass out of the cage between widely spaced hoops. The use of oleophilic rods could also favor thicker metal and wider space between ribs provided that tabs (118) were used to control wrap spacing between hoops.
Bitumen progressively accumulates on the rope wraps in the direction of cage ro-tation and progressively limits or stops the outflow of aqueous phase in that direction.
Hence, as a result of viscous bitumen phase accumulation on the rope wraps, outflow of aqueous phase is progressively reduced along the cage bottom in the direction of cage rotation. Increasing cage RPM reduce the amount of viscous bitumen accumulation on each rope wrap and will tend to shorten feed processing time for a cage of a given diame-ter and wrap spacing, but could reduce percent bitumen recovered from a feed..
Figure 15 illustrates ribs that may be used to form hoops for long commercially constructed agglomerator cages that use oleophilic rods instead of oleophilic balls to strip bitumen from the feed. Figure 15 A shows a typical rib with outside diameter (160) and with various cutouts (173,162) along the inside rib diameter (161). Noteworthy is that the center of curvature (163) of the outside diameter of each rib is offset by a vertical dis-tance from the center of curvature (164) of the inside diameter, but the radius of the out-side diameter is the same as the radius of the inside diameter. This is done to save on the cost of cutting of many ribs that are needed for long commercial agglomerators, to make strong but effective cage like agglomerators. As shown in Figure 15 C the cut of the in-side diameter of each rib also is the cut of the outside diameter of the next rib when cut from a sheet (169) of metal. A small reversal of cut is needed several times during each rib cut to remove the required notches (173, 162 of Figure 15A) along the inside rib di-ameters. This method of rib cutting minimizes on scrap metal and halves the cost of cut-ting ribs. Also abrasive water cutting of holes (See Figure 13, item 93) is more expensive than cutting continuous smooth curves (162) as is done in Figure 15 C.

Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
Figure 15 B shows longetudinal pipes (166), flat bars (168, 167) or welded to-gether pipe protrusions (165) projecting inward from longitudinal pipes (167, 168) or flat bars (168) welded to the ribs at the indentations (Figure 15A, items 162, 173) of each rib over the length of the cage. These are used when internal protrusions are needed in the agglomerator cage to cause oleophilic rod or ball tumbling. In some cases the protrusion of pipe only (166) welded to each rib is sufficient.. Location of rope wrap (176) between hoops and between pipes (165, 166) welded to ribs (175) is shown by the dashed line in Figure 15 B.. The further the pipes (165,166) are apart, the closer the wraps (176) will be to the cage interior (174) and to the oleophilic balls or rods.
Figure 16 provides a preliminary method for calculating the horsepower needed for turning an agglomerator cage partly filled with oleophilic balls mingling with the feed inside the cage. The drawing of Figure 16 shows moment arms resisting initial motion of cage and balls for cage segments as a function of distance from the cage center expressed in radii for a cage that is 2 meters in diameter, The moment arm of torque of each seg-ment containing oleophilic balls is shown by vertical arrows to indicate those segments of the cage that resist motion due to buoyed ball weight. The top cage quadrant portion be-low 0.4 meter radius contributes very little resistance to cage rotation where the ball den-sity in that area is close to the density of the feed and where the moment arm is relatively short. The two bottom cage half quadrants contribute a positive and a negative resistance to motion and these will tend to cancel each other out. The other half of the cage only contains balls after the cage is rotating for a cage half filled with balls.
Further calcula-tion details are provided in Figure 16. For calculating total required cage rotation horse-power it is assumed that actual required power is about 4 times the herewith calculated brake horsepower to cause ball tumbling in the cage, which accounts for friction in bear-ings, gears and rope wraps, etc., and for motor efficiency. These results appear to be close to the actual power required in the tested pilot plant equipment but will need to be confirmed for large commercial agglomerators using actual rod buoyed densities in the cage radial segments for the calculations. Figure 16 introduces an approximate method for calculating agglomerator power requirements. A similar procedure may be developed for the use of long oleophilic rods in an agglomerator.

Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
For clarity of disclosure, Figure 17 illustrates cage quadrant segment numbering for clockwise and for counter clockwise rotating agglomerator cages. Most of the aque-ous effluent leaves the cage in quadrant 2 and most of the viscous bitumen phase is trans-ferred to rope wraps in quadrant 3. Feed enters the cage from a hopper along the top of the agglomerator cage , usually along quadrant 4. From the hopper, the feed passes be-tween hoops and mechanical structural members not covered with rope wraps for flow into the agglomerator cage. The preferred location of the center of that hopper is at an angle between 45 and 60 degrees indicated in Figure 17. However, feed hopper centers between 30 and 120 degrees are also acceptable for introducing feed into the agglomera-tor. In Figure 17 the rope wraps leave and return to the agglomerator apertured wall verti-cally to connect to rollers above the cage. However, rope wraps may also leave the cage at an angle to increase the amount of cage surface covered by rope wraps and thus reduce the chance of feed overflow from the cage. Normally the ascending rope wraps leaving the bottom right quadrant should be close to vertical to prevent adhering bitumen from spilling off the rope wraps. However, the descending rope wraps returning to the cage may have an angle with vertical close to 45 degrees, and this may be accom-plished with an auxiliary roller above quadrants lor 4 to deflect the descending wraps.
Figure 18 provides density information for using standard capped empty schedule steel pipe for use as oleophilic rods in agglomerator cages. To achieve denser oleophilic rods, steel pipes may be filled with water or alternately with foamed concrete, which may prevent damage to thin walled pipes due to contact with denser pipes tumbling inside the agglomerator cage. Plastic pipes may be used instead and these may be provided with steel or reinforced concrete cores to achieve a desired rod density and rigidity. Infor-mation on using loaded golf balls in short agglomerator cages is shown as well in the in-eluded tables. Oleophilic rods should not be used in cages that are shorter in internal length than 1.5 times the internal cage diameter since short oleophilic rods may get stuck in the cage structure, which will prevent rod tumbling.
Figure 19 introduces the concept of simplifying the production of oil sand slurry for oleophilic separation since an agglomerator of the present invention can serve to dis-engage bitumen from sand grains. The figure illustrates an apparatus and method for the removal of rocks, gravel and clay lumps, that are low in bitumen content, from mined oil Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
sand while preparing sand, silt, fines, water and bitumen mixture to be separated in an oleophilic agglomerator cage used for oleophilic separation of feed. Figure 19 is based on the concept of using live saturated condensing steam to soften bitumen of an oil sand ore to allow wet sand, silt and bitumen to pass through a circular apertured wall of a ro-tating grizzly, or through apertures of circular perforated drum wall, while temporarily retaining rocks, gravel and clay lumps inside the rotating grizzly or drum until these leave through the grizzly or drum end. To achieve that objective, the drum or grizzly is tilted slightly downward towards the drum end exit. To achieve the desired separation, spacing between grizzly bars or perforations in the circumferential drum wall should be small enough to retain rocks, gravel and clay lumps while passing sand, silt and bitumen out between the grizzly bars or through the drum perforations.
A hydro-cyclone or a confined path hydro-cyclone may be used in addition to remove and water wash remaining pea gravel and coarse sand sand before the resulting product entrs an agglomertor. Figure 19 A and Figure 19 B show an exposed rotatable grizzly with a central entrance (128) in its entrance wall (125) and with support rings (126) welded to grizzly bars (127) to form the grizzly drum. The support rings (126) en-gage with rollers (129) that are driven to cause grizzly rotation. A receiver (131) is mounted under the grizzly to accept bitumen, sand and silt mixture as a result of steam condensing in the grizzly interior when the grizzly is enclosed to save on heating steam.
Rocks, gravel and undigested clay lumps (130) leave the drum exit (141) and water wet bitumen, fine sand and silt (132) leave the receiver (131) , followed by oleophilic separa-tion by an agglomerator of the present invention after removal of pea gravel and coarse sand. Figure 19 C shows an internal view of the grizzly, its entrance (128), its support rollers (129) and its receiver (131) enclosed in an enclosure (142) with saturated steam (140) entering the enclosure (142). Saturated steam (140) that enters the grizzly enclo-sure condenses on the grizzly contents (150) to allow sand, silt and bitumen to pass be-tween grizzly bars into the receiver (131). Normally the receiver (131) would have a conical bottom shape to provide for ease of removal of is contents and a water feed (not shown) may be provided to the receiver (131) contents for effective slurry flow of sand, silt and bitumen from the receiver (131) to an agglomerator (not shown) for separation.
Rocks, gravel and clay lumps (130) exit from partly closed grizzly end (141)to disposal.

Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
Figure 20 A and B are illustrations to explain why axial (central) feed distributors have been removed and are not used in current oleophilic agglomerators of this present patent. Figure 20A shows an old style agglomerator (92). Feed (89) enters the agglom-erator drum axially through a feed distributor using a screen (88) comprising rods sur-rounding the entering feed, to prevent balls from entering the feed distributor. The old style feed distributor is shaded to show distribution of the feed into the agglomerator inte-rior. Three circulation paths are shown. Path one is the path (85) of heavy balls. Path two is the path (86) of lighter balls. Path three is the path (87) created by balls impacted on by the axial feed distributor in the rotating agglomerator interior. This path results from disturbance created by the axial feed distributor (87), and appears to interfere with the interaction of paths 86 and 85 in the transfer of bitumen from the lighter balls to the heavier balls. for subsequent effective extrusion of bitumen paste out of the drum along the bottom (91) to cable wraps (90). While this could not be observed visually (since bi-tumen will coat the surface of any transparent agglomerator end wall), the axial feed dis-tributor appeared to interfere with the other two flow patterns. It is the reason why feed is now introduced through top quadrant or quadrants of the agglomerator cage for more ef-fective feed distribution into the cage. Not only does it eliminate concerns about circula-tion of oleophilic rods or balls in the cage but it also is simpler since rotary seals are not required for a concenric axial feed met. Figure 20 B illustrates feed introduction into the agglomerator through the upper quadrants of the cage not covered by rope wraps. In this case there are two main flow paths shown. The denser balls have a flow path (94) close to the bottom of the cage and the lighter balls have a flow path (93) closer to the center of the cage. The rope wraps (103) mainly cover the bottom part of the apertured cage wall (97). There is interaction between these two flow paths and there are indications that bi-tumen paste transfers from the lighter balls to the heavier balls for subsequent passage or extrusion to the rope wraps (103). An uneven internal cage surface of Figure 15 B is caused, for example, by mechanical rods or pipes of the apertured cage wall (98,99) of Figure 20 B along rib ID and results in tumbling of the oleophilic balls (not shown) inside the cage. Other possible attachments inside the agglomerator are shown as items 165, 166,167 and 168 in Figure 15 B to cause ball and rod tumbling.

Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
In Figure 20 B feed (95) enters a feed hopper (104) that normally covers the full length of the agglomerator cage. Baffles (96) may be used to evenly and uniformly con-trol feed entry into the cage.
EARLIER PATENTS GRANTED TO THE CURRENT INVENTOR, OR PEND-ING DEAL WITH:
1. Using rotating drums with perforated cylindrical wall and rubber rollers to collect bitumen from the cylindrical walls for oleophilic separation of oil sand slurry.
2. Using oleophilic mesh belts by themselves to separate oil sand slurry and many other mixtures.
3. Using agglomerators with perforated cylindrical walls partly covered by mesh belts.
4. Using multiple wraps of endless rope (or cable) on agglomerator drums as oleo-philic sieve for agglomerator drums of older designs with axial entrance of feed into the drum.
5. Using hydraulically driven positive displacement pumps to pump bitumen and/or FFT.
6. Using confined path hydro-cyclones to wash and remove rocks, gravel and sand from an oil sand slurry.
7. Using two temperature processing of oil sand slurry in a conventional PSV
(froth flotation primary separation vessel) to froth flotate warm bitumen in the PSV
and to recover bitumen from cold middlings of the PSV by oleophilic separation.
8. Using a vena contracta to disperse bitumen into water in order to transfer particu-late hydrophilic minerals from bitumen phase to aqueous phase. However the concept of using a long pipeline in turbulent flow to achieve the same objective, as described in the present patent, is new technology.
9. The early work of the present inventor used and patented drums with perforated circumferential walls as the agglomerator with mesh belt oleophilic sieves around part of the drum circumference.

Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
10. Agglomerator cages with internal reinforcement members inside the cage to cre-ate a rigid cage was patented but, unknown at that time, it interfered with oleo-philic ball circulation, which will be more severe when oleophilic rods are used in aglomerator cages or drums.

11. The option of driven heated rollers to drive drum rotation.

12. Some pending patents were abandoned as technology development passed them by.
NEW ITEMS INCLUDED IN THE PRESENT PATENT
1 The use of oleophilic separators near a mine face.
2 The use of short duration tailings ponds in conjunction with oleophilic separation.
3 The use of oleophilic rods instead of oleophilic balls inside an agglomertor that has a greater length than 1.5 times its internal diameter.
4 The location and use of hoppers to introduce feed into the agglomerator cage along the top portion of the cage not covered by rope wraps, without the use of a central (axial) feed distributor.
5 The elimination of structural members inside the agglomerator to thereby allow unrestricted tumbling of oleophilic balls or oleophilic rods inside the cage.
6 The use of ribs cut from metal plate to form hoops for constructing agglomerators where the ID of each rib is the same as the OD of each rib to save on metal and metal cutting.
7 The use of bars, rods or pipes welded to hoop ID for large potential commercial separators instead of using mechanical rods with bobbins on the rods to space the hoops.
8 The use of longitudinal tabs, pipes or bars on the inside of hoops of an agglomera-tor to encourage tumbling of oleophilic balls or oleophilic rods inside the agglom-erator.
DETAILS AND SUMMARY

Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
Froth flotation is an old technology that has been the basis for minerals extraction from crushed or ground ore in a water medium for well over a century. In that technology var-ious chemicals are used to modify mineral surface properties and then to separate result-ing water wetted gangue from oil wetted valuable minerals. Air and chemicals are used to froth the oil wetted minerals fractions and cause these to float to the top of separation vessels whilst water wetted gangue leaves the vessels through the bottom.
William Haynes, around 1870, introduced froth flotation to separate minerals from gangue. Karl Clark, around 1920 began to perfect it to separate bitumen from mined oil sand. The first commercial mined oil sand extraction plant came on stream in 1968. All this indicates that technololgy improvement takes time to become accepted by industry.Test work on oleophilic separation of mined oil sand was started by the present inventor in 1975 to re-place bitumen froth flotation as a more environmentally acceptable and cost effective process.
The earliest story of oleophilic separation came from Herodotus (484-425 BC) who saw maidens draw feathers or myrtle branches covered in bitumen through beach sand to collect flour gold. Modern oleophilic separation tackles bitumen extraction from a completely different approach than frothing an ore or dragging myrtle branches through sand. The sieve does not pass through the feed but the feed passes through the sieve,which is an important difference that clearly defines the apparatus and process of the present invention.
Only the rope wrap surfaces need to be oleophilic for the process to function but the cage structural members can be oleophobic (bitumen hating) and may preferably be oleophobic where possible since oleophilic separation screens out or separates, with an oleophilic sieve in the form of multiple cable wraps, bitumen from water, sand and silt.
Anyone in the oil sands industry who has pushed a shovel into an oil sand ore deposit during summer has seen ambient temperature bitumen adhering to that shovel by oleo-philic adhesion. Oleophilic separation is simple and much less demanding than bitumen froth flotation. Instead of a shovel, it uses a rotating agglomerator with apertured wall covered with carefully spaced oleophilic rope wraps to separate bitumen, generally at ambient temperature, from oil sand slurry or tailings pond FFT (fluid fine tailings). The agglomerator is a metal cage that rotates and is partly filled with a bed of oleophilic rods Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
or oleophilic balls of one or several densities. These balls or rods mix with the bitumen containing feed and collect onto their surfaces, by contact, cold bitumen paste particles from the feed. With a consistency of ketchup, peanut butter or tooth paste, this collected bitumen moves to the cage bottom and is extruded through apertured cylindrical wall of the agglomerator to oleophilic rope wraps that cover at least the bottom half of the rotat-ing agglomerator. From there the bitumen paste is conveyed by the sieve to a set of heat-ed rollers mounted above the agglomerator cage where it is converted into a free flowing warm bitumen product that contains no air but that, like bitumen froth, contains hydro-philic and oleophilic minerals and water. Aqueous phase effluent of this separation, con-taming hydrophilic minerals, such as sand, silt and fines , flows out of the agglomerator apertured wall and passes through sieve apertures (restricted space between adjacent wraps) to disposal. Based on data collected in bench tests, in pilot plant tests and in field comparison tests, instead of six hours, oleophilic separation when perfected and used in a commercial setting will take about 15 minutes to achieve the same or better results than commercial bitumen froth flotation that now takes 6 hours (360 minutes).
Hence, oleo-philic separation has the promise of a more than twenty four fold increase in separation speed with superior separation results as detailed in the attached pilot plant figures and tables. A second stage of oleophilic separation may be used to remove trapped hydro-philic minerals from bitumen product to yield a product that is superior to bitumen froth and with less loading on dilution centrifuges or solvent extraction.
Oleophilic minerals of the product are normally not removed by oleophilic separation but, since hydrophilic minerals are removed, the water washed bitumen contains beneficiated oleophilic miner-als to provide a potentially concentrated source of rutile and zircon, etc.
from the centrif-ugal tailings or from the product of solvent extraction. The positive results of short but effective processing suggest that oleophilic separation should be considered for mine face bitumen extraction to reduce processing time, to eliminate costly annual replacement of long distance oil sand slurry pipelines, to eliminate long distance tailings pipelines, to reduce the consumption of energy for slurry processing, to eliminate the need for com-pressed air for flotation, to reduce the carbon footprint of mined oil sands extraction and to reduce or eliminate the accumulation of naphthenic acid containing toxic, high pH, tailings (FFT) in long duration tailings ponds. The current commercial tailings ponds Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
contain large amounts of discarded bitumen and oleophilic minerals but the commercial mined oil sands industry has not developed an effective method to recover that discarded bitumen which, since 1980 has started to release large amounts of environmentally sensi-tive methane to the air. Thus far the industry has not shown much interest in encouraging others, who do have the technology, to recover that lost bitumen or to encourage com-mercialization of technology that does not discard bitumen to permanent tailings ponds.
The present patent attempts to create awareness, to protect technology and to encourage external technology review by or for the oil sands industry of this technology.
DEFINITIONS
Oleophilic separation:
Oleophilic separation, as defined in the present patent represents a concept, meth-od and apparatus for commercially separating - at temperatures well below 50 degrees centigrade - a feed mixture of bitumen phase and aqueous phase, both containing particu-late minerals not exceeding a few millimeters in any direction. It uses a rotating agglom-erator cage having two end walls which may have multiple holes along the periphery to accept mechanical rods and has a horizontal cylindrical wall in the form of multiple hoops, assembled from ribs, that also have holes along the periphery to accept the same rods. The hoops may be tied to the end walls by means of the mechanical rods in tension that pass through the holes in the end walls and through the holes in the hoops with bob-bins on the mechanical rods to equally space the hoops and thus to form a cage with end walls and with apertured cylindrical cage wall. Multiple wraps of endless plastic rope or metal rope contact the bobbins along the bottom quadrants of the cage and partly close off the space created by the bobbins between the hoops along the cage circumferential bottom and thereby control the outflow of aqueous phase of processed feed.
This deter-mines in part the residence time of feed being processed in the cage whilst bitumen phase paste of the processed mixture leaving the cage along bottom quadrants adheres to the multiple wraps and is conveyed to heated rollers above the cage to cause bitumen phase in the form of a warm free flowing liquid to leave the wraps as product of separation.
Hoops may be rolled from flat bar or may be assembled from curved ribs cut from metal Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
plate with holes to accept the mechanical rods. Alternately the agglomerator may resem-ble a welded metal cage.
Oleophilic and oleophobic In the context of the present patent, oleophilic refers to bitumen loving or having an affinity for bitumen. Oleophobic refers to bitumen hating or not having an affinity for bitumen.
Welded agglomerator cages:
Welded agglomerator cages may be used instead of having apertured drum cir-cumferential walls held together by rods in tension passing through holes in hoops or ribs between end walls hoops, with bobbins on the rods to space the hoops. A cage may be welded together using end walls, hoops and steel structural bars or pipes to fabricate the cage, as shown in Figures 14 B, 14 C and 15 B.. Tabs may be welded to or pins may be attached to longitudinal cage members to maintain equal space between rope wraps. Long oleophilic rods are more economical than oleophilic balls of the same combined volume and are preferred inside the cage, instead of balls, for large scale commercial agglomera-tor use when the cage length exceeds the cage internal diameter by a factor of at least 1.5 Agglomerator:
Agglomerator, agglomerator drum, agglomerator cage, and cage, all have the same meaning in the present patent with the exception that the word drum and its plural gener-ally refers to older technology or other equipment. Cage and its plural generally refers to modern oleophilic separation technology.
Process temperature:
Process temperature inside the agglomerator cage normally is well below 50 de-grees centigrade since the objective of the process is to yield bitumen products from the cage that have a viscosity close to or exceeding conventional ketchup, peanut butter or tooth paste when viscosities are measured at room temperature. The agglomerator cage Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
and its contents may also be at approximately room temperature to achieve the desired bitumen viscosity for effective adherence to rope wraps. The wraps convey viscous bi-tumen phase of mixture separation from the cage to internally heated rollers above the cage to produce a free flowing bitumen product. As a result, process thermal energy de-mands are very low since the quantity of cold effluent leaving the cage is much larger than the quantity of warm bitumen product of separation leaving the rollers and specific heat of feed and of effluent is much higher than specific heat of bitumen product.
Optimum separation temperature:
Aqueous phase of the feed mixture that has lost most of its contained bitumen leaves as effluent of separation through the cable wrap restricted bottom half of the cage by passing through available space between the cable wraps. For effective oleophilic separation, only a very small amount of viscous bitumen phase should leave with the aqueous effluent. When bitumen phase viscosity is too low, too much bitumen leaves the agglomerator with the aqueous phase. When bitumen phase particles in the feed are so cold that these resemble solid particles, bitumen will not adhere to the rope wraps but will also leave the agglomerator with the aqueous phase effluent. Hence, each feed may have an optimum temperature range for separation but, in all cases, that temperature is much lower than the temperature used in bitumen froth flotation because oleophilic separation is based on different concepts than flotation.
Two or more stages of oleophilic separation:
Overall operating conditions may be optimized when two or more stages of oleo-philic separation are used, each optimized for the feed it is to be processing. This may happen when the effluent of one oleophilic separator is to be separated later by another oleophilic separator after that effluent has been stored in a temporary tailings pond for a few months. In such cases, the first separator may be designed to allow more bitumen to pass out with the effluent than normal since the second separator only has to process the resulting fluid fine tailings from which sand and silt have been removed by settling and thus will capture most of the bitumen contained in the FFT when that second separator Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
has been optimized for FFT processing only. This may be done to reduce total residence time of mechanical processing when two separators are used in sequence while allowing natural minerals settling for a while between mechanical separations to assist the separa-tion process to maximize total bitumen recovery.
Combining oleophilic separation with minerals settling:
An extreme example of combining natural settling with oleophilic sparation would be to allow oil sand slurry to spray or disperse directly onto a temporary tailings pond to allow gravel, sand and silt to settle for a few months followed by oleophilic sepa-ration of the resulting liquid layers of such a pond. Such natural settling could well result in clean gravel, sand and silt at the pond bottom and clean bitumen lenses and dispersed bitumen in water and fines in the pond above the gravel, sand and silt for oleophilic sepa-ration. Risky, but well worth a small test and development program to evaluate the bitu-men content of the settled gravel, sand and silt, as a function of pond depth.
Rotation drive of the process.
The heated rollers are not driven by a motor. The agglomerator cage is driven to rotate but hangs in the rope wraps, which are closely spaced to carry most or all of the weight of the cage and its contents. When the cage is driven, there is less stress on the rising cable wraps than when the rollers are driven. This reduced stress will allow rope wraps to last longer. Normally only a lever bar keeps the cage in rotatable contact with the separator frame. Tension in the multiple wraps of endless rope carries all or most of the weight of the cage and its contents. The rollers that carry cage weight by means of cable wraps are well supported by rotatable rollers with shafts in bearings in strong mounts above the cage attached to separator support frame. These rollers are heated in-ternally to transfer heat to the wraps and to bitumen adhering to the wraps to yield a warm free flowing bitumen product that leaves the heated wraps as product of oleophilic separation. For proper operation, rotation of the agglomerator cage is by driven gears or by driven roller chains and sprockets. Lever bars are normally used to prevent cage Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
swinging and to facilitate such gear or sprocket drive. Alternate to lever bars, one set of two chains at each cage end wall may be used instead of lever bars. In that case, four roller chains mating with four sprockets on the cage and four sprockets on the separator frame keep the rotating gage positioned and prevent it from swinging.
Multi stage slurry or FFT processing:
Thus far only single stage oleophilicseparation of oil sand slurry or FFT has been reported on. However using more than one stage of slurry oleophilic separation will re-suit in an increase in bitumen reovery.
Undesirable effluent outflow:
An important consideration in oleophilic separation is that all spaces between wraps and between wraps and hoops (or ribs) should be small enough to keep feed in the agglomerator cage until a desired amount of bitumen has been removed from the feed.
This is achieved by proper and close placement of multiple wraps on the apertured cage wall over the full length of the cage.
Feed entrance into the agglomerator:
Feed for proposed effective commercial mixture separation, using long agglomer-ator cages, does not enter near the axis of the agglomerator drum, like in previous patents of the present inventor, but enters the agglomerator cage from above where space be-tween cage hoops is not covered by rope wraps. Feed entry is centered approximately between the two top quadrants or may be centered near the 45 degree angle of the top right quadrant for a counter clockwise rotating cage, as illustrated in Figure 17. Feed en-try into the cage requires careful design of feed hopper and feed control to assure uniform distribution of feed throughout the full length of the cage..
Internal structural members:

Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
Unlike in previous patents of the present inventor, there are no structural members inside the cage interior which tend to interfere with interaction of tumbling oleophilic rods or oleophilic balls inside the cages of the present patent. Removing all structural members from the cage inside allows unrestricted ball or rod circulation with feed in the cage. This is a new feature of the present patent not previously disclosed.
Endless rope:
Endless rope can be a multi strand metal wire rope that has been made endless by joining its ends by a splice, such as a long splice, in which the rope diameter at the splice is not much greater than diameter elsewhere of the rope. It can be a multi strand plastic, steel or other material rope made from any suitable material. Normally the endless rope is a multi strand twisted rope to simplify splicing. When two twisted strand ropes are placed tightly together the twisted strands often provide narrow passages for controlled passage of aqueous phase out of the agglomerator cage between rope wraps or for extrusion flow of bitumen phase to, between and around the wraps. When a non metal rope is used, its properties should not significantly lose strength as a result of heat from heated rollers contacting the rope. This means that when using plastic rope, control of roller internal heating is an important consideration to prevent deformation or undesirable stretching of the wraps. For commercial separators, long lasting, abrasion resistant metal wire ropes may be preferred.
Rope for commercial separators:
Plastic ropes can be very strong and abrasion resistant and suitable for pilot plant oleophilic separation studies since plastic rope splicing without increasing rope diameter is easy. However, large long lasting commercial oleophilic separators will have cage di-ameters 2 meters or larger and cage lengths 10 meters or longer, and will use endless ole-ophilic wire ropes (multi strand metal cable) instead of multi strand plastic ropes to ex-tend the life of the rope wraps in a commercial setting.

Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
Plating of metal rope:
Cold bitumen paste clings by adhesion to twisted multi strand metal rope and this adhesion may be enhanced by coating or plating the individual metal rope strands with an oleophilic coating such as copper, tin or oleophilic abrasion resistant metal prior to fabri-cating the rope from strands. A twisted metal rope may also be coated with a plastic cov-ering but this covering will tend to wear and may eventually break off during commercial agglomerator use. An oleophilic plating or coating on individual metal rope strands will be more effective since abrasion will not likely remove such plating from twisted metal rope surfaces not directly contacting cage or roller surfaces.
Cage weight sensing:
Since the rotating agglomerator cage is hanging in rope wraps from heated rollers above the cage, weight sensing of the cage and its contents may provide a convenient method of feed level sensing in the cage to control and prevent feed overflow along the agglomerator top. When a load cell is attached to a redirecting cable roller (Figure 11B) that keeps the wraps from rolling off the cage or rollers, the resulting time averaged load cell reading will be proportional to the total weight of the cage and its contents. In other words, measuring tension in one wraps will allow calculation of the total tension in all the wraps combined and hence will give an indication of the total weight of the cage and its contents when the load cell is calibrated accordingly.
Processing capacity:
A single 2 meter diameter, 10 meter long agglomerator cage half filled with a bed of oleophilic rods at a process residence time of 2.5 minutes per cage volume not occu-pied by bed of balls may have an estimated processing capacity of approximately 9,000 cubic meters or 13,000 tonnes per day at 95% bitumen recovery. When a second oleo-philic separator is used a few months later to process the aqueous effluent from the first Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
separator, after settling of sand, silt and some fines in a working tailings pond, total bitu-men recovery may increase to 98%. This is feasible since oleophilic separation has shown, in field testing, it does not normally require heating of oil sand fluid fine tailings and achieves high bitumen recovery from FFT..
Oleophilic:
Oleophilic in these specifications refers to a substance that has an affinity for bi-tumen and does not necessarily refer to a substance that has an affinity for light oil. For example, a rope wrap that is coated with a thin layer of light oil will not allow adhesion of bitumen to that wrap and hence is not oleophilic as used in these specifications. Simi-larly, a hot rope wrap covered with a thin layer of hot bitumen will not readily allow ad-hesion of cold bitumen to the hot wrap. It is one of the reasons for cooling of cable wraps before returning from hot rollers to agglomerator cage, if so needed. A rope covered with a thin layer of very low viscosity oil will not readily allow strong adhesion of very high viscosity oil upon contact because a thin layer of low viscosity oil represents a barrier to high viscosity oil adhesion to a normally oleophilic plastic or metal surface.
Small bench or pilot scale:
Small bench or pilot scale oleophilic separation refers to units for separating bi-tumen or oil from an aqueous feed containing oil or bitumen. I have found that using small diameter closely spaced endless rope wraps is an effective method for separating viscous or weathered oil from aqueous phase and this could lead to the development of viscous oil skimmers which are not detailed herein but are not excluded in the objectives of the present invention and its technology protection. The thinner the rope wraps and the closer the oleophilic rope wrap surfaces are together, the lower the viscosity of oil or bitumen that can be recovered efficiently from a feed by oleophilic separation. Converse-ly, the higher the bitumen viscosity of a feed the further the cable wraps may be apart, within certain limits consistent with separator construction and objectives.
Residence time in the agglomerator in minutes:

Jan Kruyer, Thorsby, AB
Residence time in the agglomerator in minutes is conveniently reported herein on the basis of total cage volume minus volume of oleophilic balls or oleophilic rods, divid-ed by feed rate in minutes.
Valuable minerals production:
Fast oleophilic separation of valuable oleophilic minerals from sedimentary and/or cushed ore is feasible by passing a mixture of bitumen, water, hydrophilic miner-als and oleophilic minerals through the apparatus and process of the present invention to produce a product comprising mainly of valuable oleophilic minerals and bitumen, and an effluent mainly comprising water and hydrophilic minerals.
Oleophobic cage coating There will be a potential advantage to oleophilic separation if the cage metal of the agglomerator is coates with an oleophobic (oil hating) coating so that only the rope wraps will present an oleophilic surface to bitumen contained in the feed leaving the cage. For that reason an oleophobic cage or an oleophobic coating on the cage metal is recommended where possible.

Claims (54)

The embodiments of the invention in which an exclusive property or privilege is claimed are defined as follows:

1. An oleophilic separation apparatus for separating a feed containing bitumen,water and particulate minerals at a temperature below 50 degrees centigrade and above 5 de-grees centigrade into a viscous bitumen phase product and an aqueous phase effluent said apparatus comprising a rotatable cylindrical metal cage having two endwalls and an aper-tured cylindrical cage wall hanging in closely spaced multiple wraps of one or two oleo-philic endless ropes from internally heated roller or rollers above the cage which roller(s) are well supported in bearings mounted in a structural frame near to or surrounding the cage such that the roller(s) can carry the weight of the cage and its contents when the cage rotates, wherein a) The cylindrical wall is fabricated from multiple metal hoops equidistantly spaced and attached to the endwalls by mechanical metal rods, pipes or flat bars equidistantly attached to the hoop inside diameters to form an apertured cylindrical agglomerator cage wall, wherein b) the closely spaced multiple wraps bear on the mechanical rods, pipes, or flat bar of the apertured wall of the cage to completely or partly support the agglomerator cage and its contents, wherein c) the wraps being closely and equally spaced between the adjacent hoops along at least the bottom half of the agglomerator cage serve to control, limit or prevent out-flow from the cage of incompletely processed feed during separation, wherein d) the same multiple wraps contact external surfaces of the internally heated roll-er(s), wherein e) wrap redirecting mechanisms are provided for each endless rope to prevent rope wraps from rolling off roller(s) or drum cage when the cage and roller(s) rotate, wherein f) a hopper is provided along top half of cylindrical cage wall not covered by rope wraps for entry of feed into the cage, wherein g) during operation the cage is partly filled with a bed of oleophilic balls or of oleo-philic rods that mix with the feed in the agglomerator cage as the cage is driven to ro-tate causing bitumen phase to transfer within the cage from the feed to surfaces of the oleophilic balls or oleophilic rods resulting in bitumen reduced or bitumen depleted aqueous phase effluent, wherein h) the bitumen reduced or depleted effluent leaves the cage bottom through confined space between the wraps along bottom cage quadrants to disposal or to reprocessing, wherein i) viscous bitumen phase extrudes through apertured cylindrial cage wall to wraps along bottom quadrants of the cage for conveyance to the heated rollers, wherein j) the viscous bitumen phase on the wraps, as a result of heat transfer from the inter-nally heated roller(s), becomes a free flowing warm bitumen product of separation.

2. The apparatus of Claim 1 wherein oleophilic balls partly fill the cage when inter-nal length of the cage is less than 1.5 times internal diameter of the cage.

3. The apparatus of Claim 1 wherein oleophilic rods slightly shorter than internal length of the cage partly fill the cage when internal length of the cage is longer than 1.5 times internal cage diameter.

4. The apparatus of Claim 1 wherein bobbins space the hoops between cage end walls.

5. The apparatus of Claim 1 wherein the hoops are formed from ribs cut from metal sheet.

6. The apparatus of Claim 5 wherein the rib outside radius length is the same as the rib inside radius length to save at least on hoop construction costs.

7. The apparatus of Claim 6 wherein protrusions are welded to cage inside diameter to improve oleophilic ball or oleophilic rod tumbling inside the cage during operation.

8. The apparatus of Claim 1 wherein during operation the agglomerator cage is driv-en to rotate by electric or hydraulic motor(s) driving sprocket and roller chain drive or drives to drive the cage and the rollers are driven to rotate as a result of tension in the rope wraps resulting from weight of the rotating cage and its contents.

9. The apparatus of Claim 1 wherein during operation the agglomerator cage is driv-en to rotate by electric or hydraulic motor(s) driving gear(s) to drive the cage and the rollers are driven to rotate as a result of tension in the rope wraps resulting from weight of the rotating cage and its contents.

10. The apparatus of Claim 1 wherein feed to the agglomerator cage is obtained from an oil sand slurry pipeline after removal of all rocks, all gravel and some sand.

11. The apparatus of Claim 1 wherein feed to the agglomerator cage is obtained from a conventional oil sand conditioning drum after removal of all rocks, all gravel and some sand.

12. The apparatus of Claim 1 augmented at the front end for suitable slurry prepara-tion for oleophilic separation in a rotating enclosed grizzly or in a rotating drum with perforated cylindrical wall wherein during grizzly or drum rotation oil sand ore enters the grizzly or drum of perforated circumferential wall to remove rocks, clay lumps and gravel from the ore as the ore contents of the grizzly or drum is heated by condensing saturated steam, wherein the rocks, clay lumps and gravel leave through the grizzly or drum end whilst condensate wetted sand, fines and bitumen pass through apertures of the grizzly or apertured drum circumferential wall to become feed for oleophilic separation after being diluted with cold water.

13. The apparatus of Claim 1 wherein during operation agglomerator cage internal temperature is less than 40 degrees centigrade.

14. The apparatus of Claim 1 wherein during operationagglomerator cage internal temperature is less than 20 degrees centigrade.

15. The apparatus of Claim I wherein during operation agglomerator cage internal temperature is less than 10 degrees centigrade.

16. The apparatus of Claim 1 for processing bitumen froth from a froth flotation de-vice mixed with added water

17. The apparatus of Claim 1 for processing aqueous effluent from bitumen froth flo-tation.

18. The apparatus of Claim 1 for processing fluid fine tailings (FFT) from an existing commercial tailing pond.

19. The apparatus of Claim 1 for processing weathered oil from an oil spill in or on water.

20. The apparatus of Claim 1 constructed for experimental purposes.

21. The apparatus of Claim 1 for processing close to mine face an oil sand slurry pro-duced from a mineable oil sand deposit.

22. The apparatus of Claim 1 for processing fluid residue from settled effluent of a mined oil sand tailings pond that is less than 50 years old.

23. The apparatus of Claim 1 for processing fluid residue from settled effluent of a mined oil sand tailings pond that is less than 2 years old.

24. The apparatus of Claim 1 for processing fluid layers of oleophilic separation ef-fluent after the effluent has resided in a temporary tailings pond long enough to settle contained sand and silt and to concentrate bitumen content in the fluid layers of the pond.

25. The apparatus of Claim 1 wherein during operation oil sand slurry feed from which all rocks, all gravel and some sand have been removed is separated into bitumen product and aqueous effluent and wherein sand, silt and fines of the effluent of oleophilic separation are removed as moist tailings of separation effluent and wherein the liquid of separation effluent is continuously recycled as a recycle stream to produce more slurry with water added to replace water removed with the moist tailings of separation for sub-sequent slurry separation in the apparatus resulting in a stable constant mineral fines con-tent of the recycle stream to maximize bitumen recovery and minimize fresh water re-quirements for separating mined oil sand ore.

26. The apparatus of Claim 1 wherein feed to the apparatus is the result of thoroughly dispersing mined oil sand in warm water at 50 degrees centigrade or lower for temporary storage in a working tailings pond for several months above ambient temperature to allow rocks, gravel and sand to settle to the bottom of the pond whilst bitumen, water and fines settle to the fluid layers above the rocks, gravel and sand in the pond for processing by the apparatus of Claim 1.

27. The apparatus of Claim 1 wherein the metal of the cage is coated with an oleo-phobic coating.

28. An oleophilic separation method for separating a feed containing bitumen,water and particulate minerals at a temperature below 50 degrees centigrade and above 5 de-grees centigrade into a viscous bitumen phase product and an aqueous phase effluent said method comprising a rotatable cylindrical metal cage having two endwalls and an aper-tured cylindrical cage wall hanging in closely spaced multiple wraps of one or two oleo-philic endless ropes from internally heated roller or rollers above the cage which roller(s) are well supported in bearings mounted in a structural frame near to or surrounding the cage such that the roller(s) can carry the weight of the cage and its contents when the cage rotates, wherein a) The cylindrical wall is fabricated from multiple metal hoops equidistantly spaced and attached to the endwalls by mechanical metal rods, pipes or flat bars equidistantly attached to the hoop inside diameters to form an apertured cylindrical agglomerator cage wall, wherein b) the closely spaced multiple wraps bear on the mechanical rods, pipes, or flat bar of the apertured wall of the cage to completely or partly support the agglomerator cage and its contents, wherein c) the wraps being closely and equally spaced between the adjacent hoops along at least the bottom half of the agglomerator cage serve to control, limit or prevent outflow from the cage of incompletely processed feed during separation, wherein d) the same multiple wraps contact external surfaces of the internally heated roll-er(s), wherein e) wrap redirecting mechanisms are provided for each endless rope to prevent rope wraps from rolling off roller(s) or drum cage when the cage and roller(s) rotate, wherein f) a hopper is provided along top half of cylindrical cage wall not covered by rope wraps for entry of feed into the cage, wherein g) during operation the cage is partly filled with a bed of oleophilic balls or of oleo-philic rods that mix with the feed in the agglomerator cage as the cage is driven to rotate causing bitumen phase to transfer within the cage from the feed to surfaces of the oleo-philic balls or oleophilic rods resulting in bitumen reduced or bitumen depleted aqueous phase effluent, wherein h) the bitumen reduced or depleted effluent leaves the cage bottom through confined space between the wraps along bottom cage quadrants to disposal or to reprocessing, wherein i) viscous bitumen phase extrudes through apertured cylindrial cage wall to wraps along bottom quadrants of the cage for conveyance to the heated rollers, wherein the viscous bitumen phase on the wraps, as a result of heat transfer from the inter-nally heated roller(s), becomes a free flowing warm bitumen product of separation.

29. The method of Claim 28 wherein oleophilic balls partly fill the cage when internal length of the cage is less than 1.5 times internal diameter of the cage.

30. The method of Claim 28 wherein oleophilic rods slightly shorter than internal length of the cage partly fill the cage when internal length of the cage is longer than 1.5 times internal cage diameter.

31. The method of Claim 28 wherein bobbins space the hoops between cage end walls.

32. The method of Claim 28 wherein the hoops are formed from ribs cut from metal sheet.

33. The method of Claim 33 wherein the rib outside radius length is the same as the rib inside radius length to save at least on hoop construction costs.

34. The method of Claim 34 wherein protrusions are welded to cage inside diameter to improve oleophilic ball or oleophilic rod tumbling inside the cage during operation.

35. The method of Claim 28 wherein the agglomerator cage is driven to rotate by electric or hydraulic motors driving sprocket and roller chain drive or drives on the cage and the rollers are driven to rotate as a result of tension in the rope wraps resulting from weight of the rotating cage and its contents.

36. The method of Claim 28 wherein the agglomerator cage is driven to rotate by electric or hydraulic motors driving gears on the cage and the rollers are driven to rotate as a result of tension in the rope wraps resulting from weight of the rotating cage and its contents.

37. The method of Claim 28 wherein feed to the agglomerator cage is obtained from an oil sand slurry pipeline after removal of all rocks, all gravel and some sand.

38. The method of Claim 28 wherein feed to the agglomerator cage is obtained from a conventional oil sand conditioning drum after removal of all rocks, all gravel and some sand.

39. The method of Claim 28 augmented at the front end for suitable slurry preparation for oleophilic separation in a rotating enclosed grizzly or in a rotating drum with perfo-rated cylindrical wall wherein during grizzly or drum rotation oil sand ore enters the griz-zly or drum of perforated circumferential wall to remove rocks, clay lumps and gravel from the ore as the ore contents of the grizzly or drum is heated by condensing saturated steam, wherein the rocks, clay lumps and gravel leave through the grizzly or drum end whilst condensate wetted sand, fines and bitumen pass through apertures of the grizzly or apertured drum circumferential wall to become feed for oleophilic separation after being diluted with cold water.

40. The method of Claim 28 wherein during operation agglomerator cage internal temperature is less than 40 degrees centigrade.

41. The method of Claim 28 wherein during operationagglomerator cage internal temperature is less than 20 degrees centigrade.

42. The method of Claim 28 wherein during operation agglomerator cage internal temperature is less than 10 degrees centigrade.

43. The method of Claim 28 for processing bitumen froth from a froth flotation de-vice mixed with added water

44. The method of Claim 28 for processing aqueous effluent from bitumen froth flota-tion.

45. The method of Claim 28 for processing fluid fine tailings (FFT) from an existing commercial tailing pond.

46. The method of Claim 28 for processing weathered oil from an oil spill in or on water.

47. The method of Claim 28 constructed for experimental purposes.

48. The method of Claim 28 for processing close to mine face an oil sand slurry pro-duced from a mineable oil sand deposit.

49. The method of Claim 28 for processing fluid residue from settled effluent of a mined oil sand tailings pond that is less than 50 years old.

50. The method of Claim 28 for processing fluid residue from settled effluent of a mined oil sand tailings pond that is less than 2 years old.

51. The method of Claim 28 for processing fluid layers of oleophilic separation efflu-ent after the effluent has resided in a temporary tailings pond long enough to settle con-tained sand and silt and to concentrate bitumen content in the fluid layers of the pond.

52. The method of Claim 28 wherein during operation oil sand slurry feed from which all rocks, all gravel and some sand have been removed is separated into bitumen product and aqueous effluent and wherein sand, silt and fines of the effluent of oleophilic separation are removed as moist tailings of separation effluent and wherein the liquid of separation effluent is continuously recycled as a recycle stream to produce more slurry with water added to replace water removed with the moist tailings of separation for sub-sequent slurry separation in the method resulting in a stable constant mineral fines con-tent of the recycle stream to maximize bitumen recovery and minimize fresh water re-quirements for separating mined oil sand ore.

53. The method of Claim 28 wherein feed to the method is the result of thoroughly dispersing mined oil sand in warm water at 50 degrees centigrade or lower for temporary storage in a working tailings pond for several months above ambient temperature to allow rocks, gravel and sand to settle to the bottom of the pond whilst bitumen, water and fines settle to the fluid layers above the rocks, gravel and sand in the pond for processing by the method of Claim 28.

54. The method of Claim 28 wherein the metal of the cage is coated with an oleopho-bic coating.