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Fall 2022

Nazemi Ashani,Mahsa

The use of sodium citrate as a secondary processing aid in combination with caustic significantly improved bitumen recovery, specifically in poor oil sands ores. The role of sodium citrate on wettability alteration of solid surfaces, benefiting bitumen liberation as well as improving bitumen...

Spring 2015

Primkulov, Bauyrzhan K

The minable oil sands extraction process can be understood on a scale of a single oil sand grain. When the oil sand ore is mixed with warm water, each sand granule is initially covered with bitumen film which ruptures under the composite effect of shear and interfacial forces, while water...

Fall 2014

Afshar, Shima

The current water-based method of bitumen extraction requires withdrawal of fresh water from the Athabasca River — a practice which leads to the continual buildup of tailings ponds and other environmental concerns. As Alberta’s bitumen production is expected to more than double by 2020, there is...

Spring 2013

Chini, Seyed Farshid

Removal of a drop from its substrate may be gradually (e.g. evaporation) or all at once (e.g. shedding). In this thesis, drop adhesion force as a base for understanding the all at once removal of a drop from its substrate, and drop evaporation in room temperature as one of the gradual removal...

Fall 2021

Sumaiya Farzana

We investigate experimentally the early time dynamics of spontaneous spreading of silicone oils with various viscosities at elevated surrounding pressures. The surrounding medium pressure is increased in a monotone fashion starting from atmospheric pressure to a maximum value of 30 megapascal...

Fall 2019

Pratama, Randy A

When considering the wettability state during steam applications, we find that most issues remain unanswered. Removal of polar groups from the rock surface with increasing temperature improves water wettability; however, other factors, including phase change, play a reverse role. In other words,...

Fall 2014

Koch, Brendan M

This thesis features experimental work done to fabricate and characterize silicon surfaces patterned using photolithographic techniques, both standard and novel, to produce a variety of surfaces with roughness of controlled geometric properties. In specific, one set of the surfaces fabricated...

Fall 2015

Chen, Huanchen

Drop transfer from one solid surface to another through stretching liquid bridges between them is important for many industrial applications. Due to the different dominate forces, three possible regimes exist: Quasi-static Regime, where the transfer process is only dominated by surface forces;...

Spring 2024

Pratama, Randy Agra

Steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) has proved to be a technically and commercially successful methodology for recovering heavy-oil in Canada. At present, there are 22 commercial SAGD projects with over 300 pads and 2,700 well pairs, contributing to over 1.5 million bbl/day of production. The...

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...