Oil sands are a mixture of sand, water, clay and bitumen 1, bitumen is a very viscous form of petroleum that is removed from the mixture for further upgrading and refining to become synthetic oil, viscous liquids are known as being very thick or sticky.
The extraction process of oil sands can be accomplished by two techniques: open-pit mining (e.g., surface mining) or in-situ thermal drilling. Bitumen extracted by surface mining is very close to the surface of Earth around 75 meters deep. In-situ drilling operations are responsible for the extraction of oil sands deeper than 75 meters, which accounts for 80% of the total Canadian oil sands reserves. In-situ drilling varies in operations and can be achieved through popular techniques such as Steam-Assisted
Gravity Drainage (SAGD) and Cyclic Steam Stimulation (CSS) 1. SAGD and CSS extract bitumen thermally through the use of steam and reducing its viscosity 3 to pump it with ease to the surface but their methods are completely different as one solely depends gravity, which is the force that attracts a physical body to the center of the Earth.
Surface mining is a simple process for extraction; the oil sands mixture is scooped up by large electric shovels and put into trucks called Heavy Haulers. The trucks then transport the extracted oil sands mixture to crushers and sizers, which are machines that break down huge clumps of the mixture into much smaller pieces. The mixture is then washed down with water and a thinning liquid to reduce the thickness.
The extraction separation cells divide the bitumen from the sand, water and clay, which are sent to the tailings ponds. The bitumen then continues for further upgrading and refining to become synthetic oil 1.
SAGD is a high-efficiency method with a recovery rate of 40% to 60%. An injection well is horizontally placed above a producer well, the steam is