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Spring 2013

Wang, Louxiang

As one of the most critical steps to recover valuable particles from a slurry using flotation, knowledge of the drainage of the thin liquid film between an air bubble and a solid surface is required. The main focus of this thesis is to develop and use an integrated thin film drainage appratus...

Spring 2013

Wang, Shiqing

Two inorganic-organic hybrid polymers, Al(OH)3-polyacrylamide (Al-PAM) and Fe(OH)3-polyacrylamide (Fe-PAM) were synthesized and used in flocculating model tailings (5 wt% kaolin suspensions) and laboratory extraction tailings. For comparison, a commercial anionic flocculant, partially hydrolyzed...

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...

Fall 2012

Ma, Yuan

Two major kinds of natural surfactants are released during oil sands extraction: carboxylic acids (naphthenic acids) and sulfonic acids. In this study, commercial surfactants were used as standards to establish the suitable analytical methods with optimized experimental and instrumental...

Spring 2012

Flury, Christopher T.

To understand the role of caustic addition and its effect on the bitumen extraction process, a novel flow cell and a Denver Cell extraction unit were utilized. This allowed for the comparison of sodium hydroxide and ammonium hydroxides effect on real oil sands ores. Several ores (A1, C-ore,...

Fall 2012

Khademi, Sima

Stabilization of water droplets in froth treatment process results in poor de-watering efficiency and potentially affects final bitumen quality. The purpose of this research is to study the effect of solid contamination by diluted bitumen on water droplet stabilization in water in oil emulsions....

Spring 2011

Wu, Chendi

Understanding the mechanism of bubble-particle interactions plays a critical role in advancing flotation technology. In this study, submicron size bubbles with an average diameter less than 1 μm and a life time of at least several hours were generated using a novel hydrodynamic cavitation method....

Fall 2011

Chan, Margo Chi Wing

A cationic thermal sensitive polymer, polyN-isopropylacrylamide-co-N-[3-(Dimethylamino)propyl]methacrylamide (CP) of different molar ratios, known as CP05 and CP10 was synthesized in-house. By doping aluminum hydroxide (Al(OH)3) colloids into CP during the polymerization process, a novel hybrid...

Fall 2011

Wang, Huiran

The correlation between froth recovery and air recovery was established in a top-feeding mechanical flotation column. It was also found that the particles were stratified in froth layer, with hydrophobic particles (organic phase) concentrated in the upper region, and hydrophilic particles...

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...