| Description |
Western Tar Sands, Inc. intend to construct a pilot plant for extraction of bitumen from tar sands deposit in Raven Ridge, Utah. The process consists of solvent extraction combined with an ultrasonic unit to enhance recovery. This process is based on U. S. patents held by Western Tar Sands. The process has also been patented in Canada and other countries where there are substantial amounts of tar sands deposits. Science Applications, Inc., the Golden, Colorado office, is responsible for the conceptual design as well as supervision and management of the engineering, procurement, and construction. WTS/SAI's objective in construction of such a pilot plant is to provide definite answers to many questions regarding the technical and economic viability of a solvent extraction process in general. Even though several bench scale models of various solvent extraction processes have been built and tested, none of them provide answers to how the solvent loss can be kept under control, what the operating cost of a commercial plant will be, or the effect of bitumen content of the feed on the economic success of the process. The 30 barrels per day pilot plant, which is actually a mini-plant (as will be described later) will provide many valuable answers. This plant is to be built on WTS's Raven Ridge property located about 35 miles southeast of Vernal, Utah, a mile off Hwy. 45, as shown in Figure 1.1. This plant is designed such that it could be used as a research and development tool in order to determine the optimum operating conditions of a process, check out the efficiency of operating units on an individual basis, and compare competing units by using them in parallel streams. This plant will be operated for a minimum of a year in order to determine the effects of seasonal climatic changes on the material handling and processing systems. The plant will also be tested using different feed stock; i.e., other Utah oil sands or material brought from Canada, Venezuela, and Trinidad. Several solvents such as hexane, kerosene, gasoline, and chlorinated solvents recommended by Dow Chemicals will be used. In this report the mining, material handling, and especially the processing systems will be described in some detail. |
