Isolation and characterization of surfactants from tar sand process water

A sublation technique was used to isolate soluble surfactants and accompanying species in the aqueous phase from the hot water processing of two Utah tar sands, Asphalt Ridge and Whiterocks. Many structural similarities for the isolated surfactants were observed from IR spectra, however, the amount of sublated material form each tar sand sample differed by almost a factor of three. Seven different organic solvents/ solvent blends were selected with increasing polarity in order to obtain fractions of each of the sublated surfactants. These fractions were analyzed by FTR, MS and NMR.The analyses showed that most fractions obtained from column chromatography still consisted of a mixture of many different compounds with a predominance of carboxylic and hydroxylic moieties. These chromatographic fractions differed with respect to their aromatic nature, and the length of their hydrocarbon chains.