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Skip to Search Results- 1Afshar, Shima
- 1Jackman, Matthew
- 1Liyuan Feng
- 1Mozaffari, Saeed
- 1Olsen, Brian
- 1Primkulov, Bauyrzhan K
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Beyond Viscosity—How Density, Vibration and Interfacial Tension Affect Solvent Aided Bitumen Production
DownloadFall 2016
Bitumen and heavy oil comprise a significant percentage of proven oil reserves globally. The environmental impacts of producing these resources with current technologies is a concern for environmentalists, oil producing companies, resource rich jurisdictions and society at large. Dilution of the...
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Spring 2015
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...
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Colloid Science of Sand Remediation: A Study Motivated by the Non-Aqueous Extraction of Bitumen from Oil Sands
DownloadFall 2014
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...
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Metal particle catalyst formation from thin films for the creation of vertically aligned carbon nanotube structures
DownloadFall 2011
This work contains research associated with the metal catalysts used in the formation of vertically aligned carbon nanotube (VACNT) films through catalytic chemical vapour deposition (CCVD). The solid-state dewetting process of thin metal films is studied using Ni. In the dewetting process, grain...
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Rheology of Bitumen at the Onset of Asphaltene Aggregation and its Effects on the Stability of Water-in-Oil Emulsion
DownloadFall 2015
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...
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Spring 2017
Overly-stable froth in mineral flotation columns are sometimes a problem for separation operations. Greater quantities of fine particles in the input slurry can contribute to froth that is too stable and overruns the equipment capacity. Currently, the best ways to deal with this problem are to...
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Spring 2010
Canada has the largest known reserve of oil in the world in the form of oil sands: an estimated 1.7 to 2.5 trillion barrels of oil are deposited in combination of the sand, water and clay. The presented research is devoted to bubble-solid surface interaction, which is one of the critical areas...
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Study of thin liquid film drainage in bubble-liquid-solid systems using integrated thin liquid film force apparatus (ITLFFA)
DownloadFall 2017
Interactions involving deformable surfaces reveal a number of distinct physicochemical characteristics that do not exist in interactions between rigid solid surfaces. The main focus of this thesis is to develop a unique fully custom-designed instrument, referred to as an integrated thin liquid...
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Understanding Surface Forces and Interaction Mechanisms in Mineral Flotation by Atomic Force Microscopy
DownloadFall 2019
Bubble-particle interactions are ubiquitous and crucial to mineral fotation. The bubble-particle attachment process is mainly governed by three surface forces: van der Waals (vdW), electrical double-layer (EDL), and hydrophobic (HB) forces. Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) has become the most...