Oil sands, also known as bitumen sand are underground sandy zones, the largest of which is located in Alberta, Canada and contains approximately 8.8 billion barrels of bitumen oil. Oil sands are a mixture of sand, bitumen and water. Each grain of sand has three layers, an envelope of water surrounding the grain of sand, with an envelop of heavy viscous crude oil surrounding the water later. The bitumen layer is a highly viscous crude oil layer. The current method of extraction entails pumping high pressure steam or hot water through the sand bed and collecting the biphasic mixture. Some work has been conducted utilizing microemulsions to harvest the oil phase as a source of fuel. Work was performed to develop a microemulsion system using kerosene as a fuel model and utilizing a hydrotrope, sodium xylene sulfonate (SXS), instead of a second solvent. Nonionic surfactants of various HLB were investigated. Resulting microemulsion systems were characterized for composition, surface tension, viscosity, and evaporation rate by TGA.