Rheological Behaviour of Heptane-Diluted Bitumen in the Presence of Precipitates

• Author / Creator

  Rostami Najafabadi, Zahra

• One of the challenges that Vapor Extraction process might be conducted is the
  unpredictable precipitation of asphaltene from solvent-diluted bitumen that can
  cause process problems during bitumen extraction in porous media. The objective
  of this study was to investigate the rheological behaviour of Athabasca bitumen
  and n-heptane solutions in the present of precipitates using a rheometer and flow
  through porous media.
  Rheometry measurements shown for solutions have the viscosity higher than
  0.001 Pa·s and less than 0.0005 Pa·s, the phase angle is around 90° out of phase
  and the solutions are purely viscous; while for the solutions having the viscosity
  around 0.0007 Pa·s, the phase angle is around 84° out of phase and the solution
  behave as a non-Newtonian liquid. Also, the flow of heptane-bitumen solutions
  through a porous media experiments shows that for bitumen-heptane solution
  having viscosity around 0.0007 Pa·s, after 24 hours mixing of the solutions, the
  predicted and measured friction factor did not agreed. This disagreement might be
  because of both decrease the void area between the particles due to the presence
  of solids and non-Newtonian behaviour of the solution, which is in consistent with
  the rheology measurement results.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Rheology, porous media, asphaltene

• Graduation date

  Spring 2015

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3TH5C

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.