Browsing by Author "Park, In Young"

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    Rheological Properties of Bitumen and Bitumen-Heptane and Bitumen-Heptanol Mixtures
    (2021-01-25) Park, In Young; Gates, Ian Donald; Benneker, Anne M.; Lu, Qingye; De La Hoz Siegler, Hector
    The rheological changes and high viscosity of bitumen, arising from high molecular weight molecules in bitumen, are the main challenges for its production to the surface and its transportation in pipelines. To solve the environmental issues associated with bitumen recovery, such as greenhouse gas emissions from steam-based recovery processes, solvent injection has been a strong alternative given their ability to reduce the viscosity of bitumen. Among solvent options, the ability of alcohol solvents has not been clearly studied. In this study, two sets of experiments were conducted on the rheology of bitumen and solvent-bitumen mixtures. The first set of experiments demonstrates that the rheological behaviour of bitumen is complex since its viscosity varies with both shear rate and time. In the experiment, the rheology of bitumen and bitumen-heptanol mixtures were examined. Their viscosities and shear stress were measured with increasing and decreasing shear at 24C. The results showed that non-Newtonian behaviour was observed in all samples. Additionally, hysteresis and ramp test of the viscosity profiles revealed that the bitumen and its mixtures are time-dependent (anti-thixotropic) fluids. In the second set of experiments, the viscosity of bitumen in contact with heptanol was examined and compared to bitumen-heptane mixtures. The results show that the effects of heptanol on viscosity reduction were less than that of heptane. The literature values of Hansen Solubility Parameters (HSP) of bitumen, asphaltenes, heptanol and heptane were used to explain the reason for the lower viscosity reduction effect of heptanol on bitumen. The relatively high viscosity of heptanol and deviation of the fractional HSP between bitumen and heptanol is also consistent with the results.