US Patent Issued to HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN IN RIGHT OF CANADA AS REPRESENTED BY THE MINISTER OF NATURAL RESOURCES on March 25 for "Direct contact process and method for producing hot water using mature fine tailings (MFT)" (Canadian Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 26 -- United States Patent no. 12,258,522, issued on March 25, was assigned to HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN IN RIGHT OF CANADA AS REPRESENTED BY THE MINISTER OF NATURAL RESOURCES (Ottawa).

"Direct contact process and method for producing hot water using mature fine tailings (MFT)" was invented by Quan Zhuang (Ottawa), Phil Geddis (Ottawa), Bruce Clements (Ottawa), Brianna Hataley (Ottawa), Mohammad Asiri (McNab/Braeside, Canada), Ted Herage (Stittsville, Canada), Steven Chen (Ottawa) and Lijun Wu (Ottawa).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The present invention discloses systems and methods for supplying hot water for primary extraction in the oil sands bitumen extraction process. ...