A method and system for the treatment of a biomass stream to separate organic extracts/biomolecules (such as proteins, lipids and/or carotenoids) from the biomass stream, wherein the water content of the biomass stream is decreased by bringing the biomass stream into contact with a compressed liquefied gas solvent, to create a low-water content biomass stream and introducing the low-water content biomass stream to an extraction apparatus that recovers one or more organic products with little or no measurable solvent residue.

A method and system for the treatment of a biomass stream to separate organic extracts/biomolecules (such as proteins, lipids and/or carotenoids) from the biomass stream, wherein the water content of the biomass stream is decreased by bringing the biomass stream into contact with a compressed liquefied gas solvent, to create a low-water content biomass stream and introducing the low-water content biomass stream to an extraction apparatus that recovers one or more organic products with little or no measurable solvent residue.

A system, components of the system and methods for processing, combinations of hydrocarbons, water, solids and contaminants, to separate extract, recover, filter and treat the constituent elements to enable the recovery of valuable hydrocarbons, the treatment of solids for environmentally sustainable discharge, the filtration and treatment of water for reuse, or environmentally sustainable discharge, and the extraction of contaminants. The integrated method and system incorporates alternative processing modes, each of which is optimized for the intake and processing of a materials stream which is predominately solids, or predominately water or predominately hydrocarbons, respectively. The system can dynamically adjust to accommodate variations in the composition of the intake materials stream in any particular mode. The system can be implemented in a portable, modular configuration which is cost effective, energy efficient and scalable to enable processing of any volume of materials.

A pretreatment for use with systems and methods for extracting and separating a bio-molecule, such as a lipid and/or a protein, from a biomass includes the step of contacting the biomass with a drying gas to substantially dewater the biomass to 20% water content by mass or less. Such pretreated biomass, mixed with one or more compressed liquefied gas solvents, may then be introduced into individual filter cells in a rotary pressure filter to separate lipids from proteins.

Provided is a solvent extraction method for a petroleum sludge/oil sand assisted by a particle dispersant, including: mixing a solution dissolved with the particle dispersant and the petroleum sludge/oil sand to obtain a mixture, and subjecting the mixture to solvent extraction and separation to obtain a solid phase particle and an oil-carrying liquid phase; wherein the particle dispersant includes one compound selected from the group consisting of a polyoxyethylene alkyl ether carboxylic acid, a polyoxypropylene polyoxyethylene alkyl ether carboxylic acid, and dodecylbenzene sulfonic acid; and a solvent used in the solution dissolved with the particle dispersant comprises one or more selected from the group consisting of cycloalkane and toluene.

The invention relates to a method for controlling the addition of a flocculant to a sludge, wherein the sludge is dewatered and images are made of the dewatered sludge and/or the dewatered liquid with a camera system. It is characterised in that the images are evaluated with a computer-implemented computational model that has previously been trained with a training data set, whereby the computational model divides the images into sub-images, classifies them and thus assesses the dewatering of the sludge. Optimal dewatering is achieved with improved ecological and economic efficiency.