Oil Sands

The overall goal of the oil sands research program is to understand the fundamental processes involved at the fluid (bitumen, water) / solid (clay, sand) interface. This understanding could eventually enable manipulation and control of interfacial phenomena, which in turn would allow design of improved oil sands processing techniques that are environmentally friendly and cost-effective. The physical and chemical mapping of nanostructures at the oil sands interface is an extraordinarily difficult problem. Some of the existing techniques for chemical mapping of surface and subsurface nanostructures use vacuum technique that are not compatible with a solid-liquid interface. Therefore, achieving this goal would require developing novel tools that could provide information at nanoscale spatial resolution and with molecular recognition that cannot be obtained with currently available techniques.

Three such novel instrumentation techniques are presently under development:

  • (1) standoff detection of molecular signatures
  • (2) scanning probe surface and subsurface imaging with molecular recognition, and
  • (3) MEMS-based (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) sensors for physical and chemical characterization.