Flotation is one of the unit processes used to separate the bituminous component of oil sands as part of the process of oil extraction. Some of the bitumen is not recovered in the primary separation vessel and reports to the tailings. These tailings are typically retreated in a scavenging operation to try to recover some of the remaining bitumen.
Three industrial-size single downcomer Jameson Cells were sold by Xstrata Technology to Shell Canada in 2007 for a large scale pilot plant project and eight 500 mm downcomers were sold to Syncrude Limited in 2008. In the latter case, the downcomers were used to treat middlings in an existing tertiary oil recovery vessel in a bitumen recovery process patented by Syncrude.