posted on 2020-11-26, 13:37authored byAmir Motamed Dashliborun, Joe Zhou, Payman Esmaeili, Xuehua Zhang
The
recovery of valuables from industrial wastewater prior to release
to the environment is indispensable to comply with ever pressing economic
and environmental imperatives. In this work, microbubbles generated
by a 3D-printed venturi tube were applied in a laboratory-scale pipeline
loop to evaluate the recovery performance of residual bitumen from
oil sands tailings. The addition of microbubbles provided a sufficient
surface area in tailings media to capture effectively bitumen droplets.
Our results showed that the injection of microbubbles upstream substantially
enhanced the separation kinetics on account of providing sufficient
time for the bitumen–bubble interaction prior to the collection
trough. It was found that ca. 50% of residual bitumen can be recovered
using the upstream injection of microbubbles for a duration of a 30
min circulation of tailings in the pipeline loop. Such enhancement
in bitumen recovery revealed a high potency of microbubbles in collecting
more bitumen from tailings in comparison with ca. 10% recovery achieved
through flotation size bubbles injected by the needle. The findings
of the current study suggest a new potential solution for intensification
of the bitumen recovery process from industrial wastewater.