14 DAY TRIAL // Oil sands, or most commonly known as tar sands, are a mix of sand, water and extremely heavy crude oil components, which can be subjected to a destructive distillation process, in order to obtain part of the petroleum derivate extracted during regular oil distillation process. Aside from the fact that the mixture contains sand, clay and water, the oil sands lack some of the lighter fractions of the oil, thus leaving only the heavy fractions that are partially biodegradable by bacteria.
This natural breakdown process can take place directly in the oil sand reservoir, removing the polluting industrial extraction process, which involves heated liquids, or gas (such as Steam) to loosen the tar-like sand, which can then be collected in situ and pumped to the surface.
The main goal of the two countries that share more than a quarter of the total reserves of oil sands of the world, Canada and Venezuela, is to improve the extraction and distillation process of the oil sands, in order to obtain more energy from the deposit than that used during processing. At the same time, biodegradable bacterial solutions would enable the cleaner methods to extract methane directly from the oil sand deposit, and a lower carbon dioxide emission during the process.
However, the biodegradable solution does not offer only advantages, as during the degradation process, the bacteria which consumes the oil also makes it more viscous and contaminates it with sulphur, making further processing extremely difficult and costly.
Alternative solutions involve using aerobic bacteria, as most of the natural processes are caused by anaerobic bacteria that trigger a fermentation process in the oil sand deposit. Scientists argue that the same process can be applied by using anaerobic bacteria to extract methane extremely rapidly, and not only that, but they could do it directly into the oil sand deposit.
According to the companies that are involved in the oil sand distillation process, about one sixth of the energy that a barrel of fractional product releases is used in the extraction process. They argue that, by the year 2015, they will be able to devise a new method that will have an extraction ratio of nine to one. However, even so, while companies would extract clean natural gas, the environment would still be contaminated with underground bitumen.
The biodegradable process would have to find a way to capture the carbon dioxide gas emitted during the fermentation process, which separates the carbon dioxide gas from the hydrogen, and take care of the resulted bitumen at the same time. This could be made by separating the distinct families of bacteria that act in different stages of the degradation process.