Rare Earth Elements in Alberta Oil Sand Process Streams

Roth, Elliot; Bank, Tracy; Howard, Bret; Granite, Evan

doi:10.1021/acs.energyfuels.6b03184

Title: Rare Earth Elements in Alberta Oil Sand Process Streams

Journal Article · Wed Apr 05 00:00:00 EDT 2017 · Energy and Fuels

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.energyfuels.6b03184· OSTI ID:1393393

^[1]; Bank, Tracy ^[1]; Howard, Bret ^[2];

^[2]

National Energy Technology Lab. (NETL), Pittsburgh, PA, (United States); AECOM, Pittsburgh, PA (United States)
National Energy Technology Lab. (NETL), Pittsburgh, PA, (United States)

The concentrations of rare earth elements in Alberta, Canada oil sands and six oil sand waste streams were determined using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP–MS). The results indicate that the rare earth elements (REEs) are largely concentrated in the tailings solvent recovery unit (TSRU) sample compared to the oil sand itself. The concentration of lanthanide elements is ~1100 mg/kg (1100 ppm or 0.11 weight %), which represents a >20× increase in the concentration compared to the oil sand itself and a >7× increase compared to the North American Shale Composite (NASC). The process water, which is used to extract the oil from oil sands, and the water fraction associated with the different waste streams had very low concentrations of REEs that were near or below the detection limits of the instrument, with the highest total concentration of REEs in the water fraction being less than 10 μg/L (ppb). Size and density separations were completed, and the REEs and other potentially interesting and valuable metals, such as Ti and Zr, were concentrated in different fractions. These results give insights into the possibility of recovering REEs from waste streams generated from oil sand processing.

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Research Organization:: National Energy Technology Lab. (NETL), Pittsburgh, PA, (United States). In-house Research

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Fossil Energy (FE)

Grant/Contract Number:: FE0004000

OSTI ID:: 1393393

Report Number(s):: CONTR-PUB-270

Journal Information:: Energy and Fuels, Vol. 31, Issue 5; ISSN 0887-0624

Publisher:: American Chemical Society (ACS)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 21 works

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Investigation of Thulium and Other Rare Earth Element Mass Fractions in NIST SRM 1632a Bituminous Coal Reference Material by Quadrupole ICP-MS Roth, Elliot; Bank, Tracy L.; Granite, Evan Geostandards and Geoanalytical Research, Vol. 42, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1111/ggr.12203	journal	February 2018
Recovery of extra-heavy oil and minerals from carbonate asphalt rocks by reactive extraction Li, Xingang; Bian, Renzhou; Wang, Junyan RSC Advances, Vol. 9, Issue 25 https://doi.org/10.1039/c9ra02025j	journal	January 2019
Mesoporous SiO2 Nanoparticles: A Unique Platform Enabling Sensitive Detection of Rare Earth Ions with Smartphone Camera Dai, Xinyan; Rasamani, Kowsalya D.; Hu, Feng Nano-Micro Letters, Vol. 10, Issue 4 https://doi.org/10.1007/s40820-018-0208-2	journal	June 2018

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