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Fall 2019
The oil-based drilling fluids are mainly used to explore hydrocarbon resources. During the drilling operation, a significant amount of oil-contaminated drill cuttings, which are crushed rocks, sands and clays mixed with the drilling fluids, are transported to the surface. In order to reduce the...
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Electrocoalescence of Water Droplets in Oil Emulsions: Effect of Electric Fields, Surfactants, and Chemical Demulsifiers
DownloadSpring 2019
Stabilization of water-in-oil droplets during bitumen extraction and refining process poses a major challenge in the oil sands industry. These crude oil emulsions are stabilized by rigid films at water droplet-oil interfaces. The salty water remaining in oil causes equipment corrosion, catalyst...
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Spring 2019
This research aims to improve oil sands tailings treatment by applying a combination of quick lime (calcium oxide) and anionic or cationic polymers in the flocculation process. A procedure including mixing lime, dilution of mature fine tailings (MFT) in the lime supernatant and addition of...
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Fall 2015
Water-in-oil (W/O) emulsions create many processing problems in petroleum industry. The enhanced stability of droplets and poor separation of emulsions are often associated with the interfacial accumulation of asphaltenes. The complex nature of asphaltenes has complicated the understanding of...
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Fall 2012
Recently, a commercially available biodegradable polymer, ethyl cellulose (EC) has been found to be effective in destabilizing water-in-diluted bitumen emulsions. In this study, the role of hydroxyl content and molecular weight of ECs and the effect of mixing and operating temperature in...
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Studying Structure-Nanoaggregation Relations of Polyaromatic Molecules in the Bulk Oil Phase and at the Oil-Water Interface Using Molecular Dynamics Simulation
DownloadSpring 2014
The detection, identification and characterization of early stage molecular association of polyaromatic molecules into nanoaggregates, where these nanoaggregates represent the first level of molecular clusters or building blocks are critical in areas such as design and fabrication of advanced 3-D...
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Fall 2012
Built on the established success of Al-PAM, an in-house synthesized, organic-inorganic hybrid polymer, for flocculation and filtration of fresh oil sands extraction tailings, this research is to understand working mechanism of Al-PAM, focusing on the effect of Al-PAM properties (molecular weight...
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Spring 2013
Sodium hydroxide (NaOH) is used as a chemical additive to enhance bitumen recovery from oil sands by surface-mining extraction process. The addition of NaOH adjusts the pH of the slurry water to pH ~8.5 (approximate pH of process water). The change in pH of oil sand slurry affects the process...