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Fall 2014

Brown, Lisa D

The Alberta oil sands contain one of the world’s largest reserves of oil - over 169 billion barrels of bitumen are economically recoverable with current extraction technologies. Surface mining, whereby the ore is extricated from the earth and bitumen is obtained via a hot water extraction...

Spring 2021

Longley, Hereward

This dissertation examines the first development phase of the Alberta oil sands industry from the 1960s to the early 1990s. It draws on public and private records from archives in Canada and the United States, the results of collaborative research with the Fort McMurray Métis, and oral history...

Spring 2016

Yang,Fan

During the extraction of crude oil or bitumen, stable water-in-oil emulsions are inevitably formed. The emulsified water contains chloride ions and other organic acidic compounds that cause severe corrosion problems to the downstream plant equipment, creating operational and safety issues and...

Fall 2013

Way, Laura Anne

This dissertation examines the relationship between Canadian newspapers, the development of Alberta’s oil sands, and neoliberalism. It uses both content and discourse analysis to analyze coverage of oil sands development in six English-Canadian newspapers between October 1, 2005 and October 31,...

Fall 2011

Ewanchuk, Andrea Marie

Fluorescence technology was examined as an analytical tool for identifying naphthenic acids in process-affected water. The fluorescence signal from process-affected water was narrowed down to the extractable organic acid fraction, known to contain naphthenic acids. A characteristic intensity...

Spring 2010

Adegoroye, Adebukola

Understanding mineralogy and surface properties of fine solids is vital in oil sands processing and tailings management. Fine solids in oil sands are often contaminated by tightly bound organic matter (OM) originally or during hydrocarbon removal, thereby increasing surface hydrophobicity and...

Fall 2013

Loewen, Derek J.

Hydraulic transport is commonly employed in the mining industry to transport crushed ore to a processing facility. Dense slurry flows inflict heavy wear on pipes, leading to significant process downtime and loss of revenue. Several factors have been identified as key contributors to pipe wear. ...

Spring 2018

Pennetta de Oliveira, Leonardo

Bitumen has been extensively extracted from oil sands through the Clark Hot Water Extraction (CHWE) process. This extraction process uses hot water and alkaline conditions to remove bitumen from oil sands ores. The tailings produced by this process are mixtures of sand, clays, residual bitumen,...

Spring 2020

Lu, Yi

Interfacial properties at the oil-water interface are of key importance to various operations in the petroleum industry, especially in the aqueous-based heavy oil recovery process. However, different operation stages often require different interfacial properties, which could be conflicted with...

Fall 2014

Mirmontazeri, Leylisadat

The non-aqueous extraction process involves dilution of mined oil sand with an organic solvent (the “diluent”), followed by separation of unwanted materials (clays, silica sand, connate water, etc.) from the diluted bitumen. The main focus of this research is on the removal of fines solids from...