Thermal recovery of oil from tar sands

A process for thermal recovery of oil from tar sands is described, which consists essentially of two steps. In the first step, mined and suitably sized tar sand is pyrolyzed at temperatures of 450 to 550 degrees Celsius in an inert atmosphere to crack and volatilize most of the contained bitumen. The bitumen vapor is then condensed and collected to give synthetic crude oil. In the second step, coke formed as a by-product in the first step is combusted with air at temperatures of about 55 to 650 degrees celsius.