The Wood-Beaver process is a solvent extraction process which uses a fatty acid blend (light hydrocarbons, aromatics, and fatty acids) as the solvent and utilizes amphiphilic phase behavior and phase shift to recover the fatty acids from the solvated bitumen. The process consists of mixing the solvated bitumen with an alcohol-water wash which precipitates the bitumen as the bottom phase of the primary settler. The top phase of the settler contains the fatty acid/alcohol/water/light hydrocarbons components. The fatty acid and light hydrocarbons are then recovered in a secondary settler by shifting the phase equilibrium by either over-dosing with water or by driving off alcohol by the application of heat. This paper presents experimental equilibrium phase behavior data and the correlations resulting from an analysis for the quaternary system of oleic acid, bitumen, isopropyl alcohol, and water. The data are presented in the form of psuedo ternary diagrams. The NRTL modelling equation was applied to the oleic acid/brine/isopropyl alcohol system in order to determine a set of interactive and non-randomness parameters that adequately describe the liquid-liquid phase behavior of this ternary system. The phase envelope and accompanying tie lines reproduced from the model showed acceptable agreement with the experimental data. © 1990, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.
