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Spring 2019

Baker, Kathleen E.N.

My research was motivated by a fatality that occurred at an oil sands tailings operation on January 19, 2014, when a worker drowned in an underground cavern which formed under a leaking tailings transport system. At the time of the incident, the organization and workers did not know that ground...

Fall 2018

Riya, .

There is a growing need to decrease the viscosity of bitumen using minimal diluent addition to reduce the cost of transportation. However, due to the inherently free radical rich nature of bitumen, even on exposure to low autoxidative conditions adverse effects on the viscosity and hardening of...

Fall 2017

Rashed, Yara A

This study examines the use of carbon xerogel (CX) material for the adsorption of naphthenic acids (NAs). The adsorption of NAs is crucial for the reclamation of unconventional oil processed water, more specifically Alberta’s oil sands process-affected water (OSPW). CX material is synthesized at...

Spring 2010

Mani, Farnaz

In the development of a non-aqueous bitumen extraction process, a major obstacle is solvent loss due to hydrocarbon attachment to the reject sand grains. A proposed solution to this problem is to wash (i.e. remediate) the oil-contaminated sand grains with water and surfactants. This research is...

Fall 2013

Stewart, Matthew

The extraction and refinement of oil sands bitumen produces substantial quantities of liquid tailings and solid coke. Tailings contain metals and naphthenic acids, which require remediation before mine closure. Adsorption is a potential remediation technique which may reuse stockpiled petroleum...

Fall 2015

Mozaffari, Saeed

Asphaltenes are the heaviest fraction of bitumen. Asphaltenes not only play an important role in the high viscosity of bitumen but also in the water-in-oil (W/O) emulsion stability. Nevertheless, their exact function in the stability mechanism of W/O emulsion still remains unresolved. It is...

Fall 2012

Hou, Jun

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...

Spring 2016

Panda,Siddhant

Non-aqueous extraction technologies are currently being investigated as an alternative to the conventional water based process for extracting bitumen from oil sands. The reduced dependence on fresh water and land for creation of tailing ponds makes non-aqueous technologies a greener alternative....

Spring 2010

Gao, Song

There are several technical challenges in large scale heavy oil processing. In the oil sand industry, for example, the existence of water-in-oil emulsion in diluted bitumen produced from froth treatment presents a great challenge to the industry. In this work, the effect of different bitumen...

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...