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Spring 2016

Entezari Najafabadi, Iman

The bitumen production from oil sands surface-mining operations produces large volumes of mineral wastes called tailings. Characterization of the oil sands tailings is of importance to monitor their state for trafficability and reclamation issues, to assess the tailings operation performance, and...

Spring 2010

Ni, Xiao

Molecular dynamics simulation and density functional theory were applied to calculate heats of immersion (ΔHimm) of n-heptane, toluene, pyridine and water on two model sand surfaces and two model clay surfaces. Our results indicated that water showed the highest ΔHimm for the model clay surfaces...

Fall 2017

Brown, Daniel M.

Thunderstorms are common in boreal forest regions and can cause dangerous hazards such as lightning, forest fires, hail, wind, and flooding. Significant research has been conducted to help predict thunderstorms to mitigate or avoid the hazards and damage. The development of thunderstorms...

Fall 2020

Collins, Catherine

Alberta’s oil sands generate large volumes of tailings from bitumen ore processing. These tailings ponds produce biogenic methane, which can be measured across 60-80% of the tailings surface. Based on current surface area data and emissions studies, tailings ponds could account for 8% of Canada’s...

Fall 2014

Khan, Muhammad F

The extraction of bitumen from oil sands in Alberta, Canada, leads to the creation of tailings that are contained in lake-sized ponds under zero discharge policy. Stratification of tailings over time leads to the formation of mature fine tailings (MFT), an oil based emulsion containing residual...

Fall 2015

Rocha Aguilera, Gonzalo

As demand for fuel increases, new technologies that can convert heavy oil and bitumen into light fuels are needed. Natural zeolites have been proven to catalyze reactions that decrease molecular weight, density, nitrogen, and metals content as well as vacuum residue content when mixed with raw...

Fall 2015

Howell, Daniel Mark

As of December 2013, the cumulative area disturbed by oil sands mining in NE Alberta was 896 km2 out of an estimated final footprint of 4,800 km2 – all of which will require reclamation. Expensive handling costs and scarce soil resources necessitate judicious management and application of...

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...

Spring 2013

MacKenzie, Dean D

A major barrier to reclamation after oil sands mining is lack of commercially available, diverse native plant seeds and propagules for revegetation. Potential of LFH (forest floor material) developed on coarse textured soil for establishing native plants and how salvage, placement and storage...

Spring 2015

Renaud, Richard

Solvent based extraction has the potential to supplant the current hot water based extraction process as the industry standard method for recovering bitumen from mined oil sand. It has the potential for higher bitumen recovery that is less sensitive to the grade of oil sand ore being processed....