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Spring 2011

Javaheri, Ali

The demand for a new solvent to treat oilsands was behind the purpose of this project; molecular dynamics simulation was used in this study. Supercritical water, supercritical carbon dioxide and other selected organic solvents in their supercritical state were studied. Meso-tetraphenyl porphyrin...

Spring 2011

Xie, Jinggang

A Surface Forces Apparatus (SFA) was used in this study to investigate the fundamental surface forces in oil sand processing research. Asphaltene coated surfaces were chosen as the research topic due to the critical role of asphaltenes in oil sands processing, from bitumen extraction, froth...

Fall 2015

Liang, Yin

In previous studies, nontoxic and biodegradable ethylcellulose (EC) was shown to be capable of breaking water-in-diluted bitumen emulsions. Nevertheless, the demulsification mechanism of EC has not been correlated to its effect on the physical properties of stabilizing interfacial asphaltene...

Fall 2016

Zhang, Ling

Asphaltenes are the heaviest component in crude oil and bitumen. The molecular interactions and interfacial behaviours of asphaltenes are closely related to many challenging issues in oil production, which are believed to play an important role in stabilizing water-in-oil (W/O) and oil-in-water...

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...

Spring 2013

Ansari, Nesma Nasir

Solvents are ubiquitously used in oil sands extraction industry to enhance the separation of bitumen froth. With developing new technologies such as non-aqueous bitumen extraction, the need to track solvent interactions with oil sands components throughout the extraction process and to identify...

Spring 2017

Shi, Chen

Interactions mechanisms of deformable air bubbles and liquid droplets play critical roles in many established and modern industrial processes. Understanding the interaction mechanisms of oil droplets and air bubbles is of fundamental and practical importance to solve many challenging issues,...