Assessment of Amount of Emulsion Stabilizers in Oil Sands Bitumen

Tamayo Duran, Leidy Carolina

Assessment of Amount of Emulsion Stabilizers in Oil Sands Bitumen

dc.contributor.advisor	Yarranton, Harvey
dc.contributor.author	Tamayo Duran, Leidy Carolina
dc.contributor.committeemember	Bryant, Steven
dc.contributor.committeemember	Trifkovic, Milana
dc.date	2023-11
dc.date.accessioned	2023-08-09T16:38:38Z
dc.date.available	2023-08-09T16:38:38Z
dc.date.issued	2023-07
dc.description.abstract	In current commercial oilsands bitumen extraction processes, ores of different quality are blended to utilize poorer quality ores and maintain a consistent processibility. The choice and proportion of ores in the blend is guided by the fines content of the ores. However, the processibility does not correlate consistently with the fines content, leading to poorer than predicted performance. It was hypothesized that the deviations in processibility were caused by differences in emulsion stability which could be attributed to different amounts of emulsion stabilizers in the bitumens from different ores. These stabilizers are believed to be concentrated in the asphaltenes, the least soluble fraction of the bitumen. To test the hypothesis, the amount of strong emulsifiers was assessed for asphaltenes from different mines in Alberta. Bitumen was extracted with cyclohexane using a multistage method equivalent to a counter current process with a solvent/ore ratio of 0.67 w/w. Asphaltenes were separated and the toluene insoluble components were removed. The asphaltenes were fractionated by solubility and interfacial adsorption methods. The strong stabilizer content was determined by comparing the stability of water-in-oil emulsions prepared from the different fractions dissolved in a solution of heptane and toluene. Finally, the stability of water-in-oil emulsions prepared from bitumen in the same solution was measured to determine if the there was a correlation between the strong stabilizer content and water-in-bitumen emulsion stability. No correlation was found and therefore the hypothesis was disproven and variations in strong stabilizer content are not likely to impact ore processibility. The extraction data collected in this study also allowed testing the claim that bitumen recovery in non-aqueous extraction (NAE) is unaffected by ore quality. Bitumen recovery and product quality were measured for each ore. It was observed that bitumen recovery correlated negatively with the clay content of the ore. This loss of recovery was attributed to bitumen adsorption on clays, where higher clay content led to greater mass adsorption and lower recovery. The product quality was found to be insensitive to the ore quality.
dc.identifier.citation	Tamayo Duran, L. C. (2023). Assessment of amount of emulsion stabilizers in oil sands bitumen (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/1880/116840
dc.identifier.uri	https://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/41682
dc.language.iso	en
dc.publisher.faculty	Graduate Studies
dc.publisher.institution	University of Calgary
dc.rights	University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.
dc.subject	Asphaltene
dc.subject	Water-in-Oil Emulsion
dc.subject	Emulsion Stabilizer
dc.subject	Non-Aqueous Extraction
dc.subject	Recovery
dc.subject	Oil sands
dc.subject.classification	Engineering--Petroleum
dc.title	Assessment of Amount of Emulsion Stabilizers in Oil Sands Bitumen
dc.type	master thesis
thesis.degree.discipline	Engineering – Chemical & Petroleum
thesis.degree.grantor	University of Calgary
thesis.degree.name	Master of Science (MSc)
ucalgary.thesis.accesssetbystudent	I do not require a thesis withhold – my thesis will have open access and can be viewed and downloaded publicly as soon as possible.