Search
Skip to Search Results- 1Afshar, Shima
- 1Baldygin, Aleksey
- 1Chen, Huanchen
- 1Chini, Seyed Farshid
- 1Islam, Md Minhajul
- 1Koch, Brendan M
-
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...
-
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...
-
Spring 2013
Removal of a drop from its substrate may be gradually (e.g. evaporation) or all at once (e.g. shedding). In this thesis, drop adhesion force as a base for understanding the all at once removal of a drop from its substrate, and drop evaporation in room temperature as one of the gradual removal...
-
Dynamics of spontaneous initial spreading and spreading of a hydrodynamically driven droplet under the influence of surrounding pressure
DownloadFall 2021
We investigate experimentally the early time dynamics of spontaneous spreading of silicone oils with various viscosities at elevated surrounding pressures. The surrounding medium pressure is increased in a monotone fashion starting from atmospheric pressure to a maximum value of 30 megapascal...
-
Effect of Temperature, Phase Change, and Chemical Additive on Interfacial Properties and Performance of Steam Applications
DownloadFall 2019
When considering the wettability state during steam applications, we find that most issues remain unanswered. Removal of polar groups from the rock surface with increasing temperature improves water wettability; however, other factors, including phase change, play a reverse role. In other words,...
-
Fabrication and Characterization of Photolithographically Patterned Rough Surfaces Demonstrating Extreme Contact Angle Behavior
DownloadFall 2014
This thesis features experimental work done to fabricate and characterize silicon surfaces patterned using photolithographic techniques, both standard and novel, to produce a variety of surfaces with roughness of controlled geometric properties. In specific, one set of the surfaces fabricated...
-
Fall 2015
Drop transfer from one solid surface to another through stretching liquid bridges between them is important for many industrial applications. Due to the different dominate forces, three possible regimes exist: Quasi-static Regime, where the transfer process is only dominated by surface forces;...
-
Metal particle catalyst formation from thin films for the creation of vertically aligned carbon nanotube structures
DownloadFall 2011
This work contains research associated with the metal catalysts used in the formation of vertically aligned carbon nanotube (VACNT) films through catalytic chemical vapour deposition (CCVD). The solid-state dewetting process of thin metal films is studied using Ni. In the dewetting process, grain...
-
Spring 2015
Aiming to pursue studying enhanced oil recovery processes with an ex-situ produced emulsion as flooding agent, an improved core flooding experimental system was designed, constructed and commissioned. The developed system allows the use of not only emulsion, but also other flooding agents,...
-
Spring 2024
Steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) has proved to be a technically and commercially successful methodology for recovering heavy-oil in Canada. At present, there are 22 commercial SAGD projects with over 300 pads and 2,700 well pairs, contributing to over 1.5 million bbl/day of production. The...