Subventions et des contributions :

Subvention ou bourse octroyée s'appliquant à plus d'un exercice financier (2017-2018 à 2018-2019).

Towards the manufacturing of saleable crude oil and derived products, petroleum producers worldwide face thex000D
difficult task of separating complex mixtures of water, solids and oil, termed oilfield emulsions. Oilfieldx000D
emulsions produce excess of water in oil, corrosion and mineral scale in pipes. In order to decrease thesex000D
problems, demulsifiers, scale and corrosion inhibitors are commonly used. Alberta oil sands mining operationsx000D
and downhole production release a huge amount of chemical processed water (PW). This enormous PWx000D
inventory has caused severe problems to the local environment and has posed a great thread to the humanx000D
beings and the inhabited wildlife. In order to develop robust and viable methods to tackle this great challenge,x000D
oil sands industries and researchers highly rely on routine and accurate measurements on the PW samples byx000D
using different analytical characterizations. However, it is extremely difficult to achieve accurate and reliablex000D
characterizations on the PW samples, especially when the concentration of desired components (such as scalex000D
inhibitor and corrosion inhibitor) is much lower than the interfering species coexisting in PW. Usually, the PWx000D
samples contain a high concentration of inorganic salts (high salinity), which can greatly interfere with thex000D
intricate measurements and even paralyze the devices. To date, there is still no effective way to reduce orx000D
remove the inorganic salts while simultaneously keeping target chemicals unaffected or unchanged in waterx000D
samples for further characterization. The main objective of this project is to develop a robust technology,x000D
based on graphene oxide membranes, to effectively remove most inorganic salt ions from industrialx000D
process-affected water while not affect the concentration of desired components (e.g., scale inhibitor andx000D
corrosion inhibitor), thereby ensuring collection of sufficient and qualified process water samples for industrialx000D
analysis as demanded. The fundamental interaction mechanism will be also investigated and the parameters forx000D
the preparation of GO membranes will be further optimized so the technology would be applicable to variousx000D
process-affected water samples in oil sand and downhole oil production.