#922: Mal Carroll: Patent for Sodium Citrate Use in Hydro Transport

Among the 18 new patents for Syncrude this year is one for the use of sodium citrate.

That’s a biodegradiable chemical more commonly known as a food additive or flavour enhancer.

Mal Carroll is Syncrude’s head of Research and Development.

He says sodium citrate is added to the company’s hydro-transport that moves oil sands from the mine to the processing plant.

MAL CARROLL:  We needed to find a chemical that was going to help enhance the recovery process in this process.   And started of course with a literature search and understanding of what was done in other industries And then identifying 100 or chemicals that might be candidates to improve the performance. They were tested at laboratory scale which narrowed it down to about 10 and then we identified two chemicals out of that 10 to test at a larger scale.  And within a very short time of those results, we were able to construct a full scale commercial facility to dose the sodium citrate into our hydro transport system.  

According to Mal Carroll, when sodium citrate is added to the hydro-transport, it works as a detergent to wash or release more oil from the ore.