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Skip to Search Results- 1Afshar, Shima
- 1Amundarain, Jesus
- 1Ansari, Nesma Nasir
- 1Berahman, Behnam
- 1Cardozo, Samuel D.
- 1Carvalho do Prado, Glaucia H
- 6Xu, Zhenghe (Chemical and Materials Engineering)
- 3Gupta, Rajender (Chemical and Materials Engineering)
- 3Liu, Qingxia (Chemical and Materials Engineering)
- 3Zeng, Hongbo (Chemical and Materials Engineering)
- 2Amirfazli, Alidad (Mechanical Engineering)
- 2Gray, Murray R. (Chemical and Materials Engineering)
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Fall 2015
Oil sands found in Athabasca and Cold Lake regions of Northern Alberta form Canada’s primary source of energy reserves. Asphaltenes, a significant part of bitumen is often considered to be the least valuable component of crude oil due to various factors such as difficulty in transporting and...
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Spring 2015
The minable oil sands extraction process can be understood on a scale of a single oil sand grain. When the oil sand ore is mixed with warm water, each sand granule is initially covered with bitumen film which ruptures under the composite effect of shear and interfacial forces, while water...
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Spring 2016
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...
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Characterization of Athabasca asphaltenes separated physically and chemically using small-angle X-ray scattering
DownloadFall 2010
Athabasca asphaltenes were characterized using small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) with synchrotron radiation. Two methods were used to separate asphaltenes from Athabasca bitumen. Conventional chemical separation by precipitation with n-pentane, and physical separation realized by passing...
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Characterization of asphaltene molecular structures by cracking under hydrogenation conditions and prediction of the viscosity reduction from visbreaking of heavy oils
DownloadSpring 2013
The chemical building blocks that comprise petroleum asphaltenes were determined by cracking samples under conditions that minimized alterations to aromatic and cycloalkyl groups. Hydrogenation conditions that used tetralin as hydrogen-donor solvent, with an iron-based catalyst, allowed...
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Fall 2009
In this study, we describe the use of different silica materials to separate vanadium compounds from Asphaltenes. We used high performance flash chromatography separation method to separate asphaltenes at different solvent strengths on sea sand. The separation conditions were optimized for flow...
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Colloid Science of Sand Remediation: A Study Motivated by the Non-Aqueous Extraction of Bitumen from Oil Sands
DownloadFall 2014
The current water-based method of bitumen extraction requires withdrawal of fresh water from the Athabasca River — a practice which leads to the continual buildup of tailings ponds and other environmental concerns. As Alberta’s bitumen production is expected to more than double by 2020, there is...
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Spring 2015
This thesis presents a thorough examination of the corrosion and fouling behaviour of crude oil at refining conditions on industrially applicable heat transfer surfaces. The depletion of light sweet crude oil reserves means that the processing of ever heavier and more sour crude oils is...
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Spring 2016
The tendency of asphaltenes to aggregate in crude oil is observed at SATP and is enhanced at elevated temperatures. At these conditions, asphaltenes aggregation is a problem as it will ultimately lead to mesophase formation, a precursor of coke, known for causing plugging and fouling of...
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Development of Solvent Selection Criteria Based on Diffusion Rate, Mixing Quality, and Solvent Retrieval for Optimal Heavy-Oil and Bitumen Recovery at Different Temperatures
DownloadFall 2015
Heavy-oil and bitumen recovery requires high recovery factors to offset the extreme high cost of the process. Attention has been given to solvent injection for this purpose and it has been observed that high recoveries are achievable when combined with steam injection. Heavier (“liquid”) solvents...