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Fall 2011

Kalantari, Samira

One of the major issues in the current oil sands waste management techniques is a lack of a direct linkage between the long-term mine plans and the quantity of the tailings produced downstream. This research is focused on developing a linkage between oil sands long-term mine plans and the final...

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 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 2014

Guest, Stuart Dan

Seven Ni-WC tubular wires utilized in this study were characterized by the nickel sheath area, powder composition, and overall initial carbide volume fraction of the wire prior to welding. The electrical resistivity of steel, stainless steel, and Ni-WC welding consumables were measured from...

Fall 2020

Miles, Sarah, M

Current development of Alberta’s oil sands region requires large volumes of water, leading to an abundance of oil sands process affected water (OSPW). OSPW contains naphthenic acid fraction compounds (NAFCs) which have been found to contribute extensively to OSPW toxicity. Degradation of this...

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....

Spring 2020

Zhang, Dingfang

Albertan oil sands ores are becoming more difficult to process efficiently as the clay content of the ore increases and the grade of the ore worsens. A key to improving the extraction of bitumen from low-grade oil sands, thereby increasing the longevity of this critical resource, is reducing the...

Fall 2019

Poon, Ho Yin

Oil sands fluid fine tailings (FFT) are comprised of sand, silt, clay, residual organics, salt, trace metals and process-affected water (OSPW). In order to accommodate and remediate large amounts of FFT, a full-scale demonstration pit lake, where FFT was capped with a mixture of OSPW and fresh...

Fall 2014

Chen, Liang

The formation of stable water-in-oil emulsions during bitumen extraction poses problems for water separation from diluted bitumen, which leads to equipment corrosion and catalyst fouling in downstream operations. Demulsifiers are used to break the stable emulsions and assist the separation of...

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...