BusinessHABBitumen Exploitation Business Location:Bitumen is a naturally occurring, complex viscous mixture of hydrocarbons.
It is the heaviest, thickest form of petroleum (Historica, 2007).
In its natural state is not recoverable like conventional petroleum through wells but may be refined into petroleum products.
Such as gasoline, kerosene, or gas oil without first being upgraded to crude oil.
Bitumen Exploitation Business Location:On the average, bitumen is composed of: carbon- 83.2%, hydrogen-10.4%, oxygen-0.94% nitrogen-0.36%, sulphur-4.8%
Others methane, hydrogen sulphide, traces of nickel, iron and vanadium (0.3%) Anonymous (2003).
Bitumen Exploitation Business Location:The Nigerian bitumen belt is on the onshore areas of the southwestern Nigeria Eastern Dahomey (Benin) Basin.
The probable reserve of bitumen and heavy oil in the entire Nigerian belt is approximately 120×4 km with an estimated 30-40 billion barrels in reserve (Adegoke and Ibe, 1982; Ekweozor and Nwachuku, 1989).
Bitumen Exploitation Business Location:Nigerian bitumen possesses relatively high amount of naphthenes, aromatics and asphaltenes that are similar to the conventional oil.
This makes the Nigerian bitumen a very useful alternative source of petroleum hydrocarbon and a potential feedstock for petrol-chemical industries (Adegoke et al., 1991).
Bitumen Exploitation Business Location
Trace elements such as transition metals (V, Ni, Cu and As)
Get into bitumen in form of porphyrin complexes at its early stages of formation.
Location:And the concentrations of these elements as well as their relationships to one another are useful in generating information on the origin of its formation.
As well as oil-to-oil and oil-to-source rock correlation analyses (Adebiyi et al., 2006).
Bitumen Exploitation Business Location
Vanadium is present in petroleum and bitumen in the form of metalloporphyrin chelates.
Or mixed tetradentate complex of transition metals (Todorovic, 1987).
The assessment of vanadium content of bitumen is very important from exploration, refining and eco-toxicological perspectives.
V traces in refining process are capable of causing corrosion of columns or poison catalysts used during refining (Oluwole et al., 1993).
Bitumen Exploitation Business Location
Many methods had been reported for extraction and quantifying of vanadium in Bitumen .
In this article, the solvent extraction using tri-butyl phosphate and spectrophotometric determination of vanadium was used.
The spectrophotometric determination of the vanadium was carried out after its extraction with tri-butyl phosphate/hexane in an acidic medium.
The easy availability of the instrument used in this work made the method suitable.
This work was designed in identification with the enormous deposit of Bitumen in South-west, Nigeria.
And aimed at estimating the amount of vanadium that can be obtained from her bitumen at Agbabu and Igbokoda in Ondo state, Nigeria.
Probably, we may be able to define the economy and industrial applicability of the extraction process.
The Ondo State Government has said that it is set to begin the exploitation of bitumen, one of the mineral resources found in the state in commercial quantity.
Bitumen Exploitation Business Location:
Briefing newsmen on the development in Akure , the Commissioner for Information, said the state government had secured a licence to exploit the commodity through Beecon Nigeria Limited.
Where the government had near complete ownership.
He said government had before now signed a Memorandum of Understanding with an American company.
Liquefied Resources, and was also expected to sign a joint operating agreement with the same outfit for the immediate exploitation of bitumen.
The commissioner stated that of Liquefied Resources led by its President.
wWere already in the country and would meet with the representatives of the government to finalize all arrangements regarding the joint operating agreement.
The company officials will visit the proposed sites and also set a date for the commencement of bitumen extraction.
Bitumen Exploitation Business Location:
According to the company, as part of the agreement.
Liquefied Resources is expected to wholly fund the project.
Adding that the agreement would regulate profit-sharing between the handling company and the government.
Read also:Bitumen Business in Nigeria: How to Start and Make Money from it
Bitumen Exploitation Business Location: Extraction
Extraction is where bitumen is separated from the sand.
The slurry is fed into Primary Separation Vessels (PSVs), where the bitumen floats to the surface as froth. Tumblers are also used.
Before heading to the Upgrader, the froth is diluted with naphtha.
And put into either inclined plate settlers or through centrifuges to remove water and solids.
Bitumen Exploitation Business Location
Over 99% of the naphtha is recovered and recycled back to the extraction plant.
Middlings, which remain suspended in the middle of the vessel, are fed through smaller versions of the PSVs to recover additional bitumen.
Bitumen Exploitation Business Location: Primary Separation Vessel (PSV)
The remaining material consists of sand, water, clay.
Fine silts and residual bitumen, and is known as tailings.
Tailings are pumped by pipeline to one of several settling basins on site.
These settling basins, or tailings ponds, are the source of the recycled water used in the bitumen extraction process.
Over 85% of the water used at Syncrude is from these facilities.
They are also actively pursuing a suite of technologies which will assist us in reclaiming tailings more quickly.
BusinessHAB