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Spring 2019

Qiao, Peiqi

Asphaltenes are polyaromatic compounds present in crude oils, which are defined as being soluble in aromatic solvents and insoluble in n−alkanes. The partition of self−associated asphaltene aggregates at oil−solid and oil−water interfaces is the root cause of a number of major problems...

Fall 2016

Kuznicki, Natalie P.

Phase separation of stable oil-in-water and water-in-oil emulsions poses major challenges for a variety of industries, including the petroleum industry. The stability and destabilizing of petroleum emulsions highly depend on interfacial properties such as surface/interfacial charges, interfacial...

Fall 2011

Zhu, Ren

Carbon dioxide (CO2) was shown as a promising alternative for oil sands tailings treatment with economical and environmental benefits. This thesis aims to understand the role of CO2 addition in settling and densification of oil sands tailings. In this study, CO2 was pressurized into two...

Fall 2016

Curran, Meghan D

Caustic is the most commonly used process aid to improve processability of mineable oil sands ores in the Athabasca region. The addition of caustic adjusts the pH of the extraction process, disperses clays, and acts as a water softener. Understanding how these changes affect the fundamental...

Fall 2019

Zhu, Yeling

Surface mining followed by Clark’s hot water bitumen extraction (HWBE) process has been employed in the current mineable oil sands industry for massive bitumen production. This method is faced with numerous challenges such as high energy consumption, limited bitumen quality, production from...

Fall 2010

SrinivasaRajagopalan, Sundeep

To better understand bitumen conditioning stage in oil sands extraction process a flow cell was designed to study bitumen liberation directly from sand grains, using real oil sand ore. A high-grade oil sand ore was subjected to various water temperatures and pH values to examine the bitumen...

Fall 2018

Ng, Jason K.H.

Many tailings treatment technologies rely on the use of water-soluble polyacrylamides (PAM) to flocculate fine solids. However, PAM-induced flocs are often loosely-structured and retain significant volume of water due to the hydrophilicity of PAM and fine clays in oil sands fine tailings....

Fall 2021

Ivanova, Nina Olegovna

Properties of thin liquid films between two approaching droplets or between a droplet and a solid surface are critical for emulsion stability and for mineral flotation. If the thin liquid film is stable, no coalescence occurs, while an unstable film will lead to rupture and coalescence or the...

Spring 2013

Wang, Shiqing

Two inorganic-organic hybrid polymers, Al(OH)3-polyacrylamide (Al-PAM) and Fe(OH)3-polyacrylamide (Fe-PAM) were synthesized and used in flocculating model tailings (5 wt% kaolin suspensions) and laboratory extraction tailings. For comparison, a commercial anionic flocculant, partially hydrolyzed...

Spring 2016

Chowdhry, Manjeet

Collectors are one of the most important ingredients of froth flotation in mineral processing, as they selectively render the desired minerals more hydrophobic than others. Current crop of sulfide collectors interact with almost all sulfide minerals. This necessitates the use of complicated...