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Fall 2020

Kohut, Evan Taylor

The rheology of asphalt binders is an important factor in the design and construction of roads. As polymer modification is now often required to meet performance demands, the rheological behaviour of the binders has become increasingly complex. Within the past decade, a new method to evaluate...

Fall 2016

Suda, Justin P

“High-float” (HF) emulsions are dispersions of micron-sized bitumen droplets in water, with a special type of anionic surfactant functioning as stabilizer. By allowing the water to evaporate from an HF emulsion, what remains is called a “high-float emulsion residue.” Although indistinguishable in...

Spring 2015

Omidghane, Mehdi

In many applications, it is desired to separate unwanted fine particulates from a liquid by gravity settling. An efficient separation, however, will be feasible only if a combination of aggregation and sedimentation occurs. To understand the kinetics of such a process, a mathematical model that...

Spring 2015

Rostami Najafabadi, Zahra

One of the challenges that Vapor Extraction process might be conducted is the unpredictable precipitation of asphaltene from solvent-diluted bitumen that can cause process problems during bitumen extraction in porous media. The objective of this study was to investigate the rheological behaviour...

Fall 2014

Mirmontazeri, Leylisadat

The non-aqueous extraction process involves dilution of mined oil sand with an organic solvent (the “diluent”), followed by separation of unwanted materials (clays, silica sand, connate water, etc.) from the diluted bitumen. The main focus of this research is on the removal of fines solids from...

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

Karkooti, Amin

Environmental concerns about water-based extraction necessitate the development of an alternative non-aqueous extraction method. One of the challenges that any non-aqueous extraction process is encountered is the elimination of suspended fine solids from solvent-diluted bitumen. This study...

Fall 2012

Lin, Feng

The coalescence of emulsified liquid drops is critically important to many separations processes. It is, for example, central to the extraction of bitumen (a form of extra heavy crude oil) from the Alberta oil sands. This research concerns the colloidal interactions between bitumen droplets in...

Spring 2011

Fotovati, Maryam

A major challenge to any “solvent-based” bitumen extraction technology is the removal of suspended fine solids from the hydrocarbon medium (i.e. diluted bitumen). To address this problem, we examined how colloidal solids could be made to aggregate in a hydrocarbon medium and thus be separated by...