Alberta oil sands contain bitumen, a very viscous crude oil that requires intensive water and energy for its upgrading and recovery processes. In this matter, formidable challenges face bitumen and oil sands production including transportation, quality upgrading with lesser environmental footprints and economically feasible technologies. These challenges boost finding alternatives to conventional upgrading processes in order to process and upgrade these types of unconventional oils. One possible way for enhancing bitumen quality is by removing a problematic component of polar heavy hydrocarbons, like asphaltenes. Our research group has carried out significant amount of original research in the area of design and characterization of different types of metal-based nanoparticles for adsorption and catalysis of asphaltenes. Nanoparticles, due to their size in the order of 1-100 nm and the possibility of functionalization allow transport through porous media and in-situ upgrading of heavy/unconventional oils. This study focuses on developing a new environmentally sound and low-cost yet highly efficient silicate-based nanoparticle adsorbent/catalyst system capable of selectively retaining polar heavy hydrocarbons from heavy oil matrix. In this study, nano-iron silicate materials were synthesized with different crystalline domain sizes. Additionally, these nano-iron silicate materials were tested for the first time for the adsorptive removal of violanthrone-79 (V-79) which has been shown to model the kinetics of adsorption of nC5 Athabasca visbroken asphaltenes. The use of a structurally well-known molecule (V-79), capable of simulating the adsorptive behavior of averaged asphaltenic fractions has helped in understanding the adsorption behavior of asphaltenes over nano-iron silicate materials. Adsorption kinetics and isotherms were performed to understand the adsorption mechanisms. Additionally, we evaluated the catalytic effect of nano-iron silicate materials towards V-79 oxidation.

Conference Title

2nd Alberta Nano Research Symposium

Conference Country

Canada

Conference Date

May 30, 2015 - May 31, 2015

Conference Sponsor

University of Alberta and University of Calgary