TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Canadian innovator and project developer US Oil Sands on Tuesday announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office had approved its patent application for its biosolvent-based oil sands extraction method, which the company bills as an industry “game changer”.

The TSX-V-listed company had developed an efficient and low-cost process employing a proprietary, environment-friendly process using a biodegradable citrus-based biosolvent to separate oil from sand.

This unique process – which employs an extract from orange peels called d-limonene – results in a 96% recovery of bitumen and the elimination of tailings ponds.

"The successful approval of our US patent application marks another important step towards reinforcing our company's environmental and cost-effective technological advantages in the oil sands mining space. We believe our biosolvent-based approach to oil sands extraction is a true game changer for the industry, as it has the dual-benefit of reducing the environmental footprint of an oil sands project and lowering capital expenditures by as much as 75% when compared to existing oil sands mining projects,” CEO Cameron Todd said.

The company was previously granted a patent by the Canadian Intellectual Property Office in 2012 and had completed filing for an international patent through the World Intellectual Property Organisation in October 2007.

The company said that with the US and Canadian patents in hand, it provided a critical strategic advantage for the company, as no commercial oil sands mining process had yet been implemented that could operate with the overall reduced environmental footprint that US Oil Sands' process provides.

The company believes that the low capital cost of the process allows it to be economically deployed to a broad range of smaller deposits, previously deemed out of reach for oil sands mining operations using traditional extraction processes.

US Oil Sands reported that its 13 ha of bitumen leases in Utah's Uinta basin made it the largest bitumen lease-holder of State lands in the US, and the company's permitted PR Spring project was expected to be the first commercial bitumen extraction project in the US.

The PR Spring project currently holds a best estimate of discovered resource of 184.3-million barrels.