The extraction of bitumen from western oil sands: Volume 2

In these days of plentiful fuel supplies, synthetic fuels are not in demand; but with the current rate of consumption of oil the importance of synthetic fuels will only increase. The United States currently imports 50% of its transportation fuel and such a dependence could be potentially dangerous, as was evidenced by the 1973 Arab oil embargo. Hence it is important to develop technologies that will make it economically feasible to utilize reserves to produce synthetic fuels. Natural bitumen, which includes materials commonly termed as tar sands, oil sands, or natural asphalt, is a significant potential source of synthetic fuel and this work deals with optimizing the operation of a thermally-coupled fluidized-bed tar sands extraction process.