Recovery bitumen from asbuton with sodium tripolyphospate and SDBS surfactant as wetting agent

Abstract

The objective of this research is to develop a more-environmental friendly method of bitumen extraction from Asbuton, which also has high rate of percentage recovery, by using a mixture of sodium tripolyphosphate (Na5P3O10/NTP) and sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonate (SDBS) surfactant in several temperatures process. The extraction process itself has three steps of reactions, first is premixing, second is digesting and third is separating. Separated layer of bitumen after separation process will be analyzed to obtain bitumen percentage recovery during extraction. The purpose of premixing step is reducing viscosity of Asbuton by adding DEX up to 60 percent (w/w) of the total mass and then mixing it for 30 minutes. The digesting step is carried out by adding a mixture of DEX Asbuton with wetting agent. Wetting agent is a mixture solution of sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonate surfactant (SDBS) and Na5P3O10 (NTP) in various concentration. This mixture is being stirred at 1500 rpm using controlled temperature at 60, 70, 80 0C for 30 minutes. We use various surfactant ratio of SDBS from 0.125%; 0.25%; 0.37%, 0.5% (w/w) to the total mass ratio, and for NTP ratio is 0.125%; 0.25%; 0.37%; 0.5% (w/w). Separation process is done by adding water to form three layers of solution, the top layer, DEX-bitumen solution, will be weighed and measured for its weight and density to obtain the percentage recovery of bitumen. It can be concluded that the combination of SDBS and NTP mixture as wetting agent, can bring better result on bitumen extraction from Asbuton asphalt. The highest percentage of bitumen recovery is 74.63% at 80°C of temperature, and with SDBS concentration of 0.125% and Na5P3O10 concentration of 0.25%.