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Introduction
Publications
Publications (55)
During toxicity testing, chemical analyses of oil and exposure media samples are needed to allow comparison of results between different tests as well as to assist with identification of the drivers and mechanisms for the toxic effects observed. However, to maximize the ability to compare results between different laboratories and biota, it has lon...
A mesoscale oil spill test tank located in Natural Resources Canada research facility at CanmetENERGY Devon (AB, Canada) was used to study the mixing energy and particle behavior near the shorelines. Four types of waves have been generated in the tank where the instantaneous velocities were measured using an acoustic doppler velocimeter (ADV), and...
Despite many studies of diluted bitumen (DB) behavior during spills in saltwater, limited information is available on DB behavior in fresh water. This study examined the collective weathering processes on changes of fresh DB spilled in the North Saskatchewan River water and sediment mixture in a mesoscale spill tank under average air/water temperat...
Oil and gas development and transportation in many areas of the world, such as the oil sands region of Alberta, Canada, are heavily monitored to minimize the environmental impacts of development and the risk of oil spills. However, oil spills to aquatic environments still occur. Although the science of oil spills has received considerable attention...
Negative ion electrospray Orbitrap mass spectrometry was used to analyze water samples taken from a pilot-scale spill tank test of conventional crude oil on freshwater. A 56-day spill test was performed, and water samples were taken at regular intervals throughout the test to determine what changes in water chemistry occur with time. Orbitrap mass...
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Monitored natural recovery (MNR) was assessed as a non-invasive method for limiting residual oil exposure in the aquatic environment following contained spills of Cold Lake Blend diluted bitumen (CLB) and conventional heavy crude (CHV) at the IISD-Experimental Lakes Area in Canada. Oils were applied and left in place for 72h to simulate p...
Transportation of crude oil across North America's boreal ecozone creates the potential for spills in freshwater where less is known about the sensitivity of resident fish than for marine systems. The sensitivity of wild fathead minnows (FHM) to residual concentrations (ppb range) of the water accommodated fraction (WAF) of diluted bitumen (dilbit)...
For several years now, the Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) research facility at CanmetENERGY Devon has been performing experiments in a pilot-scale spill tank using 1,200 L of river water to examine the physical and chemical behaviours of various crude oil/water mixtures under varying water temperature regimes. As oil toxicity can be modulated by...
The stabilization of olefins in thermally processed bitumen is a focal area for development of bitumen partial upgrading technologies. While a number of approaches have been proposed, including alkylation, oligomerization, and adsorption, hydrotreating is still the most effective strategy for treating olefins in thermally cracked products such as c...
Instability associated with the presence of olefins in bitumen that is thermally processed during partial upgrading is a major concern for pipeline transportation and downstream refining. A common strategy for stabilizing thermally processed oils is to selectively hydrogenate the olefin-rich fractions, typically the naphtha fraction (IBP–204°C). In...
The persistence of petroleum spilled into aquatic environments is highly dependent on the complex interplay of natural weathering processes, including evaporation, dispersion, biodegradation and photooxidation. While evaporation and biodegradation processes remove non-persistent fractions of crude oil from water relatively quickly, sunlight-induced...
The primary objectives of this work were to formulate, blend, and characterize a set of four ultra-low-sulfur diesel surrogate fuels in quantities sufficient to enable their study in single-cylinder-engine and combustion-vessel experiments. The surrogate fuels feature increasing levels of compositional accuracy (i.e., increasing exactness in matchi...
An analytical method that provides chromatographic information regarding gas oil resins has been developed. This method uses a high performance liquid chromatographic system without backflushing and a single hyper-cross-linked polystyrene column. The use of the latter was warranted as it retains aromatic model compounds more effectively than a typi...
The present invention relates to the use of microorganisms (biocatalysts), or catalysts derived from these organisms (enzymes), to improve the quality of crude oil and bitumen as an attractive alternative to current upgrading methods. The invention identifies and characterizes the microorganism species, in particular, N. muscorum (UTEX 2209) and Ko...
The potential effect of a spill of diluted bitumen on fresh water environments has become a public interest issue as increasing volumes are being produced and transported through pipelines and railways across North America. Diluted bitumen is produced by blending lighter oils like condensate or synthetic crude oil, with bitumen. The resulting produ...
Previously, nuclear-magnetic-resonance (NMR) carbon-type-analysis data were used to develop a mathematical model of mild thermal conversion (visbreaking) of Athabasca bitumen (Chan et al. 2006). In that work, the major reaction pathways followed during visbreaking were identified. This approach is being extended in the current work to model the vis...
This report documents and compares the results of detailed analyses of the physical and chemical properties of ten advanced alternative and renewable diesel fuels and four commercial ultra low sulfur diesels (ULSDs). A key objective of this study conducted by the AVFL-19 Working Group of the Coordinating Research Council (CRC) Advanced Vehicle/Fuel...
This report documents the results of detailed analyses of the physical and chemical properties of three FACE Diesel Fuels that were reformulated: FD2B, FD4B, and FD7B. The original matrix of FACE Diesel Fuels was designed by the Fuels for Advanced Combustion Engines (FACE) Working Group of the Advanced Vehicle/Fuel/ Lubricants (AVFL) Committee of t...
In this study, a novel approach was developed to formulate surrogate fuels having characteristics that are representative of diesel fuels produced from real-world refinery streams. Because diesel fuels typically consist of hundreds of compounds, it is difficult to conclusively determine the effects of fuel composition on combustion properties. Surr...
At temperatures between 220 and 400°C, naphthenic acid and sulfur-containing species present in many global crudes are known to cause refinery corrosion. Naphthenic acids are organic acids often described as cycloalkane ring(s) with an attached aliphatic chain having a terminal carboxylic acid group. Elemental sulfur, mercaptan, sulfide and polysul...
The 19F nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra of 3-fiuorophenylalanine and 3-fluorotyrosine in bicarbonate buffer are characterized by a main resonance band and a well-resolved upfield resonance. We show that the upfield resonance is due to the formation of a carbamate between the amino group of the amino acid and bicarbonate. The intensity of t...
The analyses of the 1H nmr spectra of fluorene, 2,7-dibromofluorene, and anthrone are reported. The benzylic couplings in these compounds are compared with those in indene and toluene. It is argued that the six-bond and five-bond couplings in anthrone are more compatible with a nonplanar than a planar central ring. The spectrum of the 2,7-dibromofl...
This report provides detailed results from a variety of standard ASTM International-type analyses and advanced characterization techniques conducted to measure the chemical and physical properties of a matrix of diesel test fuels known as the Fuels for Advanced Combustion Engines (FACE) diesel fuels.The work was coordinated by a fuels characterizat...
The CRC Fuels for Advanced Combustion Engines working group has worked to identify a matrix of research diesel fuels for use in advanced combustion research applications. Nine fuels were specified and formulated to investigate the effects of cetane number aromatic content and 90% distillation fraction. Standard ASTM analyses were performed on the f...
We examine the effects of asphaltenes upon the crystallization behavior of a model waxy oil. Yield stress measurements on the model waxy oils with asphaltenes isolated from Shengli crude oil showed that both the relative amount of wax to asphaltenes and the aggregation state of the asphaltenes affected the crystallization properties of the wax. At...
The effect of asphaltenes on the effectiveness of wax control polymers was studied using a model waxy oil and a set of polymers with controlled crystalline and polar/aromatic content. The effect of crystalline content was examined with a set of maleic anhydride copolymers with alkyl appendages of different lengths. Different polar and/or aromatic f...
Since 1920, certain crude oils have been found to be corrosive in refineries. At temperatures between 428 and 752°F (220 and 400°C), sulfur-containing and organic acid species in crude oils are known to promote corrosion. Elemental sulfur, mercaptan, sulfide and polysulfide species convert to hydrogen sulfide which attacks carbon and low-alloy stee...
Modeling of a thermal cracking process involves establishing a set of kinetic reactions that transform the feed into products. In a typical feed, there exist a large number of real components. Thus, an exact feed composition is not known. The most common method to overcome this difficulty is to define pseudo-components based on physical properties...
Recent deposition studies have elucidated much of the underlying physics of wax deposition in crude oil pipelines. However, the physics behind polymer additives used to combat wax deposition has not been thoroughly studied. To this end, three types of polymers that have proved effective in reducing the yield stresses of waxy gels have been tested i...
Deposits in crude oil transport lines by heavy organic components, namely waxes and asphaltenes, pose a significant industrial challenge. An 8 wt % wax solution with 0.1 wt % asphaltenes was evaluated with various polymer additives to study the ability of the polymers to break down the strength of the waxy gel. The presence of crystalline domains i...
The object of this work was to determine whether new information could be obtained by using gel permeation chromatography (GPC) to fractionate asphaltene samples prior to analysis. In particular, GPC elution profiles, elemental analyses, molecular weights by vapor pressure osmometry (VPO), and boiling point distributions of the asphaltenes isolated...
Fractionation of bitumen using distillation, SARA analysis, and gel permeation chromatography was investigated. A Water PrepLC 2000 with MicroStyrage column and ultraviolet and refractive index detectors were employed in this work. The column was converted to chloroform by running at 0.5 mL/min, and the flow was slowly increased making sure that th...
The chemical complexity and diversity of an Athabasca asphaltene sample was described using a series of molecular representations. The molecular representations were created with a Monte Carlo construction method that represented molecules with a series of aromatic and aliphatic groups. After the groups were randomly sampled for a molecule, a conne...
The vacuum residue fraction of heavy crudes contributes to the viscosity of these oils. Specific microbial cleavage of C-S bonds in alkylsulfide bridges that form linkages in this fraction may result in dramatic viscosity reduction. To date, no bacterial strains have been shown conclusively to cleave C-S bonds within alkyl chains. Screening for mic...
The dependence of coking kinetics on the chemical structure of asphaltenes was examined by reacting five different asphaltenes in 1-methylnaphthalene and tetralin at 430 °C and ca. 9.8 MPa. The selected heptane-insoluble asphaltenes were Athabasca asphaltenes from Canada, Arabian Light and Arabian Heavy from Saudi Arabia, Maya from Mexico, and Guda...
Microbial metabolism of organosulfur compounds is of interest in the petroleum industry for in-field viscosity reduction and
desulfurization. Here, dibenzyl sulfide (DBS) metabolism in white rot fungi was studied. Trametes trogii UAMH 8156, Trametes hirsuta UAMH 8165, Phanerochaete chrysosporium ATCC 24725, Trametes versicolor IFO 30340 (formerly C...
The yields of gas, liquid, and coke from the coking of Athabasca vacuum residue were determined as a function of conversion of the residue. High conversion was achieved by subjecting the unconverted residue to repeated coking steps. The cumulative yield of liquid increased by 12% from stage 1 of coking, where 80% residue conversion was obtained, to...
The +525-degrees-C residues were examined to identify differences between those residue molecules that were converted to smaller distillate molecules and those that were not. Each +525-degrees-C residue was divided into five subfractions by gel permeation chromatography. Molecular weight distributions, elemental (H, C, S, N, Ni, V, and Fe) distribu...
The complex formed between LaCl3·7H2O and the macrocyclic ligand 18-crown-6 (18C6) in methanol has been characterized by 139La NMR. Two sites in very slow exchange on the 139La NMR chemical shift time scale coexist in methanolic solutions: solvated and 1 : 1 complexed 139LaIII. Both chemical shift and relaxation rate data point to the participation...
The 19F nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra of 3-fiuorophenylalanine and 3-fluorotyrosine in bicarbonate buffer are characterized by a main resonance band and a well-resolved upfield resonance. We show that the upfield resonance is due to the formation of a carbamate between the amino group of the amino acid and bicarbonate. The intensity of t...
Deuterium solvent-induced isotope effects on 19F NMR chemical shifts of a number of fluorophenols, fluorobenzenes, and fluorubenzoic acid derivatives have been determined along with their 19F chemical shifts in water. Solvent-induced isotope effects of fluorine compounds complexed with α- and β-cyclodextrin and deoxycholate have also been investiga...
Analyses of the internal motions of proteins have increased our knowledge of protein structure in relation to function. These analyses have been done, primarily, for water-soluble proteins, whose amino acid residues may experience two types of environments: the aqueous solvent outside or the hydrophobic core inside the protein. Residues on membrane...
The nonlytic, filamentous coliphage M13 offers an excellent model system for the study of membrane-protein interactions. We prepare derivatives of the protein containing fluorine-labeled amino acids and use 19F nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to study the protein in both deoxycholate micelles and phospholipid vesicles. We have previously described...
