Titanium Corporation Inc. (“Titanium” or the “Company”) (TSX VENTURE:TIC) is pleased to announce that the Company has recently been granted two patents covering key aspects of its Creating Value from Waste™ CVW™ technologies. The Canadian Intellectual Property Office issued Canadian Patent 2,839,509 (“Methods for Separating a Feed Material Derived from a Process for Recovering Bitumen from Oil Sands”) and the United States Patent and Trademark Office issued U.S. Patent 9,314,713 (“Apparatus and Method for Recovering a Hydrocarbon Diluent from Tailings”). These issuances bring to 13 the total number of patents held by the Company. Titanium’s patent portfolio provides intellectual property protection across the Company’s entire technology value chain, designed to efficiently recover valuable hydrocarbons and minerals from oil sands froth treatment tailings and deliver economic and environmental benefits.
“Over the past several years, our Company has developed a suite of new sustainable technologies aimed at making positive improvements for the oil sands industry,” commented Dr. Kevin Moran, Vice President Process Development at Titanium Corporation. “Collaboration has been a key component of our programs and we want to acknowledge Dr. D-Y Peng of the University of Saskatchewan and the scientists at Gas Technology Institute (GTI) for their contributions to our success in solvent recovery and the Natural Resources Canada CanmetENERGY team in Alberta for their extensive piloting of our technologies.”
Canadian Patent 2,839,509 protects innovations in solvent extraction technologies to recover bitumen from froth treatment tailings through measured control of immiscible phases in counter-current decantation circuits. Enhanced control enables a higher quality diluted bitumen product, minimizes bitumen losses while improving reliability through flexible handling of interphase material that is considered problematic in the oil sands industry. United States Patent 9,314,713 describes a novel and advanced process to recover ‘lighter’ hydrocarbons, such as solvent, diluent or naphtha, from process waste streams, including oil sands tailings. The technology’s recovery efficiency lies in optimizing the process kinetics and exploiting the vapour liquid equilibria of the tailings to provide significantly enhanced performance compared to technologies currently employed.
The Company’s commercially ready CVW™ technology is designed to process and remediate oil sands froth treatment tailings before this stream reaches tailings ponds. CVW™ is designed to recover lost bitumen, solvent and heavy minerals and reduce fugitive greenhouse gas (GHG), volatile organic compound (VOC) and secondary organic aerosol (SOA) emissions related to oil sands froth treatment tailings. The recovered commodities will improve resource sustainability, create additional value and economic diversification and establish a new minerals production and export industry for Alberta and Canada. The Company has received valuable grant funding and support from the Alberta and Canadian Governments.
