Ian D. Gates

The University of Calgary | HBI · Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering

NCG is increasingly being co-injected with steam in heavy oil production systems to reduce heat loss and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as to maintain reservoir pressure. Given increased use of NCG co-injection, the validity of conventional subcool models must be revisited since they assume that the steam chamber is comprised of water alone. The...

The in-situ formation of oil in water emulsions can contribute to the oil mobilization when combined with Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD). The produced fluids in SAGD operations and sand pack SAGD experiments often show the existence of both oil in water and water in oil emulsions. Due to the opaque nature of sand packs, however, it is uncle...

Mercury (Hg) emissions from coal-fired power plants are extremely toxic and have caused widespread concern. Unburned carbon is considered as a promising adsorbent for the removal of elemental mercury (Hg⁰). However, the relationship between adsorption energy and adsorbent structure is still ambiguous. Here, we innovatively constructed a novel three...

The economic viability of carbon dioxide electroreduction (CO2R) relies on improved performance accompanied by scalable system design. Membranes are commonly used for the separation of reduction and oxidation products as well as to provide a suitable micro‐environment for CO2R. Commercial membranes often address only one of the key challenges in CO...

Heavy oil and extra heavy oil production have increased over the past four decades with the advent of new technology enabling new and more efficient recovery processes. These technologies not only include the practice of cold heavy oil production but also improve understanding of thermal recovery processes as well as new developments in air injecti...

The synergistic promotion by photocatalysis and thermocatalysis is a promising approach for sustainable hydrogen (H2) production. Herein, we rationally design a perovskite-based catalyst with three-dimensionally ordered macroporous structure (3DOM CaTiO3-Au) for photothermal catalytic H2 production from different substrates. The hierarchical 3DOM s...

A R T I C L E I N F O Keywords: NH 3 selective catalytic reduction Double-atom catalyst Density functional theory calculations Microkinetic modeling A B S T R A C T Theoretically designing a catalyst with high catalytic activity for ammonia selective catalytic reduction (NH 3-SCR) reaction at low temperature to guide the subsequent experimental syn...

Closed-loop deep borehole heat exchanger (DBHE) systems for producing heat from geothermal sources have the advantage that the heat transfer fluid is contained within the loop. In this study, for the first time, a U-configuration closed-loop DBHE was examined to evaluate the energy produced per unit energy invested from a 2330-m-deep geothermal res...

Aqueous supercapacitors have gained recent attention as a green energy storage option thanks to their low cost and high safety. However, to date, commercial applications of aqueous supercapacitors have not been realized. To this end, we try to promote the innovation in aqueous supercapacitors with copious V2O5. Admittedly, V2O5 materials are subjec...

Abstract Aqueous supercapacitors (SCs) have been regarded as a promising candidate for commercial energy storage device due to their superior safety, low cost, and environmental benignity. Unfortunately, an age‐old challenge of achieving both long electrode lifespan and qualified energy‐storage property blocks their practical application. Herein, w...

Immiscible injection of slug(s) into a microchannel with square blocks attached to the bottom surface of the channel is studied using the phase-field approach for interface tracking. It is confirmed that immiscible injection enhances heat transfer by up to 85% compared to miscible injection considering identical thermophysical properties. The diffe...

Rational design of multimetallic synergistic catalysis is a grand challenge in the field of green catalysis because synergistic mechanisms are poorly understood. Here, by exploiting a unique apparent anti-electronegativity polarization in cobalt-titanium-yttrium trimetallic synergy, a unified methodology is demonstrated to activate oxygen and nitro...

The Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin contains large quantities of deep coal which can be produced as coal bed methane (CBM) reservoirs. The Mannville Formation of Alberta is an attractive CBM play because of its high gas-in-place potential of 4–10 BCF per section depending on coal seam thickness and gas content. One requirement for enhanced reser...

Herein, we report on a 3D MoSx/Zn3In2S6 nanoflower for efficient photocatalytic selective oxidation of benzyl alcohol (BA) to benzaldehyde (BAD) (100% conversion and 96.18% selectivity in 1 hour) with simultaneous H2 coproduction. The experimental results, in combination with DFT calculations, reveal that MoSx not only endows photothermal propertie...

Non-isothermal Rayleigh-Taylor Instability (RTI) has been investigated for incompressible, Newtonian, immiscible flows. Thermal gradients were triggered by imposing a cold and a hot temperature at the top and the bottom side of the domain, respectively. The effects of thermocapillary stresses resulting from temperature-induced interfacial tension g...

Deep eutectic solvents (DESs) have great potential for desulfurization/denitrification of oil. This work investigated the underlying effect of hydrogen bond acceptors (HBAs) in DESs on the extractive removal of quinoline, carbazole and dibenzothiophene (DBT) from oil on the basis of the intermolecular interactions. With the acid-base interaction, q...

As wells shift towards producing or injecting along their entire length, frictional pressure losses and reservoir heterogeneities become larger issues in completion design. There is now general agreement that passive flow control devices (PFCDs) are effective in mitigating these issues. However, the interplay of PFCDs with the reservoir, as well as...

Photocatalytic hydrogen production is a promising route to the provision of sustainable and green energy. However, the excess addition of traditional electron donors as the sacrificial agents to consume photogenerated holes greatly reduces the feasibility of this approach for commercialization. Herein, considering the abundant hydroxyl groups in ce...

Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) have attracted great interest in photocatalysis, but their activity is hampered by the issue of severe carrier recombination. Here, through a carboxyl group assisted coordination route, MXene decorated with carboxyl groups provides chelation sites enabling coordination with UiO‐66‐NH2(Zr/Ti) (UZT) to fabricate a tigh...

The oil sands resource in Western Canada are a considerable energy asset for Canada, but the energy and emissions intensities of producing this petroleum resource are substantially worse than that of conventional petroleum resources. With requirements for carbon-intensity reduction, new, less emissive recovery processes must be developed to enable...

Aqueous supercapacitors show advantages of high safely, prolonged lifespan, and low cost, etc. but there have never been commercial market products, nor quantitative investigation of practical pouch devices of aqueous supercapacitors. Herein, to achieve their lab‐scale to real‐life manufacture, a unique MoOx for supercapacitor use is constructed by...

Catalytic oxidation of NO and Hg0 is a crucial step to eliminate multiple pollutants from emissions from coal‐fired power plants. However, traditional catalysts exhibit low catalytic activity and poor sulfur resistance due to low activation ability and poor adsorption selectivity. Herein, a single‐atom Fe decorated N‐doped carbon catalyst (Fe1‐N4‐C...

Single‐Atom Catalysts A single‐atom Fe decorated N‐doped carbon catalyst (Fe1‐N4‐C), derived from an Fe‐doped metal–organic framework, is developed by Zhengyang Gao, Hai‐Long Jiang, and co‐workers in article number 2110123. The unique Fe1‐N4 sites in Fe1‐N4‐C enable ultrahigh activity for catalytic oxidations of NO and Hg(0) at low and room tempera...

Nunavut is a territory in Northern Canada partially within the Arctic Circle. Currently, diesel is the fuel of choice for both power and heating. Previous studies (Das & Cañizares, 2016; Hazelton, 2019) have shown that hybrid renewable energy models are feasible alternatives for electricity generation from economic, technical, and environmental per...

The poor stability of organic–inorganic hybrid perovskites hinders its commercial application, which motivates a need for greater theoretical insight into its binding mechanism. To date, the binding mode of organic cation and anion inside organic–inorganic hybrid perovskites is still unclear and even contradictory. Therefore, in this work based on...

The Cover Feature illustrates the concept of using machine learning and data science to predict the energies and properties of CsPbI3 materials. More information can be found in the Research Article by Z. Gao, X. Ding, J. Yao, H. Li and co‐workers.

The impact of steam generation on Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) process economics and environmental impacts have led to various modifications of SAGD including solvent co-injection with steam. One example is the Expanding Solvent Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage (ES-SAGD) process where 1–5 volume% solvent is injected with the steam into the...

Inorganic metal halide perovskites, such as CsPbI3 , have recently drawn extensive attention due to their excellent optical properties and high photoelectric efficiencies. However, the structural instability originating from inherent ionic defects leads to a sharp drop in the photoelectric efficiency, which significantly limits their applications i...

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have been intensively investigated and made great progress due to their high photoelectric conversion efficiency and low production cost. However, poor stability and the toxicity of Pb limit their commercial applications. It is particularly important to search for new non-toxic, high-stability perovskite materials. In...

Amphiphilic Janus nanoparticles exhibit higher interfacial activity and adsorb more strongly to fluid interfaces than homogeneous nanoparticles of similar sizes. Taking advantage of both shape and chemical anisotropy on the same particle, Janus particles offer rich self-assembly possibilities for nanotechnology. By using dissipative particle dynami...

Evaporation of salt-water solutions is common in industrial processes and nature. Evaporation kinetics for multicomponent droplets have been investigated previously but most experimental systems have droplets contacting a solid substrate. Here, drying of acoustically levitated salt-water solutions is examined. The results show that the addition of...

The literature is replete with concerns on the environmental impact of steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD), but rigorous analysis of its improved environmental performance over the past 20 years remains unresolved, as well as the underlying technological reasons for this improvement. Here, we present an analysis of historical and future greenhou...

Efficient two-dimensional molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) catalysts have not been developed for CO2 reduction. CO2 direct dissociation is the first step and rate determining step for CO2 decomposition reaction. The single and double Fe atomic MoS2 catalysts as well as pristine MoS2 and single S vacancy MoS2 were investigated to explore both adsorption...

Due to its unique properties, such as long carrier diffusion length and adjustable optical band gap, organic-inorganic hybrid perovskite has been a potentially strong photoelectric material for solar cells. However, the challenge of insufficient stability of perovskite materials has not been solved, which in turn, limits its commercial application....

The exploitation of solid hydrogen storage materials is an essential part of the large-scale utilization of hydrogen energy. However, existing hydrogen storage materials cannot have both high hydrogen density and great stability at ambient temperature. Herein, we develop transition metal-decorated boron doped twin-graphene as a novel hydrogen stora...

Geothermal energy harvesting offers a clean option for energy generation with nearly zero greenhouse gas emission. However, due to the lack of understanding of geothermal resource characterization (geological properties and distributions), optimal well placement and operation for energy generation, and energy return on energy invested, geothermal d...

Dual-atom Fe catalysts supported by three nitrogen atom doped graphene (Fe-TM/GP, where TM = Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, and Cu) are explored for methane adsorption and activation. The addition of the second metal significantly tunes the properties of the catalysts. The main factor influencing methane adsorption is electron transfer. The second meta...

Supersonic gas injection can help deliver gas uniformly to a reservoir, regardless of reservoir conditions. This technology has played a key role in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and in particular, thermal enhanced oil recovery operations. Most previous studies have focused on single phase gas injection whereas in most field applications, multiphase...

Selective catalytic reduction of NOx with NH3 (NH3-SCR) is a dominant technology to reduce NOx (deNOx). However, there are two shortcomings for commercial deNOx catalysts (vanadium-titanium-based metal oxides), such as poor low-temperature efficiency and toxicity. Thus, it is urgent to develop environmentally friendly low-temperature catalysts with...

In the past decade or so, machine learning algorithms gained remarkable attraction in the signal processing community. The availability of big datasets and high-performance computing resulted in developing a library of machine-learned algorithms. However, such algorithms are biased towards the training dataset. Moreover, compared to natural images,...

The ultrastretchable (over 12 400%) hydrogel with long-lasting adhesion, strong antibacterial activity, and robust spinnability is developed based on the oxidative decarboxylation and quinone-catechol reversible redox reaction induced by Ag-lignin nanoparticles in a precursor solution containing citric acid (CA), acrylic acid (AA), and poly (acryla...

To accelerate the application of perovskite materials in photovoltaic solar cells, developing novel lead-free perovskite materials with suitable band gaps and high stability is vital. However, laborious experiment and density functional theory (DFT) calculation are time-consuming and incapable to screen promising perovskites rapidly and efficiently...

As an advanced battery technology, lithium-ion batteries have attracted extensive attention, especially in electric vehicles. However, low capacity and poor stability are two factors hindering more extensive application of lithium-ion batteries. Herein, we performed a screening study on MXenes including M2C, MC2, M2N, MN2 (M=Sc, Ti, V, Cr), in the...

Previous studies on environmental performance of the oil sands industry in Canada conclude that its carbon footprint must be reduced. Yet, it remains unclear what threshold of carbon emissions intensity that the industry needs to meet to be within Canada's carbon share following Paris Climate Change Agreement. Here, for the first time, a top-down a...

Today's employers not only want graduates who are critical thinkers and problem solvers that are able to work in teams, but also individuals that understand innovation and how to use entrepreneurial activities to move innovations to become benefits to society. For research‐based graduate students, this is even more desired, with emphasis on an unde...

Developing catalysts with high activity, durability, and water resistance for ozone decomposition is crucial to regulate the pollution of ozone in the troposphere, especially in indoor air. To overcome the shortcomings of metal oxide catalysts with respect to their durability and water resistance, Fe-Co double-atom catalyst (DAC) is proposed as a n...

Obtaining bio-fuels (including gas and bio-oil) with high energy density remains a huge challenge due to their high oxygen content. Here we report a novel MoSx catalyst in-situ formed in a pilot-scale plant can effectively promote the co-hydrodeoxygenation (co-HDO) reaction of poplar wood sawdust and vacuum gas oil with H2. Because of the sulfur va...

Purpose This study has two aims: first, propose the use of the driver-pressure-state-impact-response (DPSIR) framework to expand the normal focus of impact pathways in social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) on endpoint impacts to a systematic analysis to find links between the main sources of social issues and impacts; second, develop a new impact as...

Water electrolysis is considered as a promising sustainable technology to produce hydrogen thereby reducing dependence on fossil fuels. The oxygen evolution reaction (OER), a half reaction of water electrolysis is hampered by its slow kinetics. Developing high performance electrocatalysts for enhancing OER kinetics is the main bottleneck of this te...

The instability at the interface between two parallel flows of immiscible liquids through a uniform planar pore is studied by using linear stability analysis. A characteristic equation determines the growth rate versus wavenumber, and instability conditions are determined. The instability is governed by a dimensionless group relating the ratio of g...

Despite technical and economic success of Steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD), improvements of its thermal efficiency as reflected by the steam-to-oil ratio (SOR) present challenges. Given that the SOR is a measure of the ratio of the energy invested to the energy (chemical energy in oil) produced and emissions intensity, there is strong motivat...

Accurate prediction of gas component viscosity is crucial in gas processing, heat and mass transfer and flow calculations, as well as gas reserves estimation. Many models have been proposed to predict the viscosity of gas components, but they have limited temperature and pressure ranges. Furthermore, machine learning-based methods have not been wid...

Stimuli-responsive emulsifiers have emerged as a class of smart agents that can permit regulated stabilization and destabilization of emulsions, which is essential for food, cosmetic, pharmaceutical, and petroleum industries. Here, we report the synthesis of novel "smart" hydroxyapatite (HaP) magnetic nanoparticles and their corresponding stimuli-r...

The effects of nanoparticles (NPs) on heat transfer in extended surface channels have been analyzed using a two-component (TC) model. The results show that unlike the single-component model, the TC model leads to more accurate predictions of the system’s heat transfer performance as a result of the direct influence of the NPs’ distribution on the h...

To extract viscous bitumen from oil sands reservoirs, steam is injected into the formation to lower the bitumen’s viscosity enabling sufficient mobility for its production to the surface. Steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) is the preferred process for Athabasca oil sands reservoirs but its performance suffers in heterogeneous reservoirs leading...

Lipase-immobilized cellulosic capsules consisting of hydrophobic ethyl cellulose (EC) and hydrophilic carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) were developed with a promising interfacial activity and water absorbency for the enhanced Pickering interfacial biocatalysis. Lipase was physically immobilized with water-absorbent materials (CMC) via hydrogen bonding...

Electrochemical reduction of CO2 to fuels has attracted a great deal of attention in recent years as a potential solution to close the carbon cycle. In search for novel catalyst materials, we present in this study density functional theory-based screening of heteroatom-doped transition metal nitrides. We first examine zinc blend and rock salt polym...

Traditionally, a predetermined amount of steam is allocated to various injector wells using reservoir model based open-loop optimization for thermal heavy oil reservoirs. Given that the steam supply cost is the main significant contributor to the overall production cost of heavy oil, intelligent allocation of steam to wells or pads in the oilfield...

Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) is a recovery process used to extract bitumen from underground reservoirs. The efficiency of SAGD is determined by the volume of steam injected (reflecting cost and greenhouse gas emissions) relative to the volume of oil recovered (revenue). Another way to look at this relationship is as a ratio of cumulative...

The oil and gas industry continuously struggles to cope with the high cost of production in the context of competitive worldwide market prices. Low oil and gas prices backstop an economic situation where exploration and exploitation of complex reservoirs are hindered. Exploration and production of complex reservoirs face several challenges. Despite...

In this study, a hybrid convolutional-recurrent neural network (c-RNN) is evaluated for making predictions of the five-year cumulative production profiles in multistage hydraulically fractured wells. The model was trained by using a combinations of completion parameters, rock mechanical properties, and well spacing and completion order for each sta...

With strong potential for improving productivity, economics, and efficiencies, data analytics and machine learning are rapidly emerging in the oil and gas industry. However, their application in heavy oil production is scarce. In this study, we use clustering methods to analyze the Kerrobert Toe-to-Heel Air Injection (THAI) project to understand th...

Fractured oil reservoirs are a major source of petroleum globally but recovery from them is extremely challenging. Extensive research is carried out to improve oil recovery from fractured reservoirs by using water, surfactant and polymer solutions and up to some extent nanofluids flooding but no significant success is achieved. Aim of the research...

Shear sonic travel time (DTS), along with compressional sonic travel time and bulk density are required in order to estimate rock mechanical properties which play an important role in fracture propagation and the success of hydraulic fracture treatments in horizontal wells. DTS logs are often missing from the log suite due to their costs and time t...

Hydraulic fracturing is widely used in the exploitation of unconventional reservoirs, such as shale gas and tight gas. However, a full understanding of the activation of natural fractures, prediction of fracture growth, distribution of proppant, and network fracture system effectiveness remain unresolved. The onset of fracturing in the media requir...

The phase behavior and physical properties of heavy oil have been considered of great importance during cold production process. In this study, constant composition expansion and compression (CCEC) tests were performed to measure and evaluate the live oil expansion and compression under various temperatures and pressures conditions through a PVT ap...

Heat and fluid flow at the edge of steam chambers found in thermal recovery processes such as steam-assisted gravity drainage and cyclic steam stimulation remain unresolved. Given the multiple phases present and contrast of thermophysical properties, it remains unclear where instabilities occur within this thin, yet critical, zone of the process. I...

Material representations that are compatible with machine learning models play a key role in developing models that exhibit high accuracy for property prediction. Atomic orbital interactions are one of the important factors that govern the properties of crystalline materials from which the local chemical environments of atoms is inferred. Therefore...

Material representations that are compatible with machine learning models play a key role in developing models that exhibit high accuracy for property prediction. Atomic orbital interactions are one of the important factors that govern the properties of crystalline materials, from which the local chemical environments of atoms is inferred. Therefor...

The oil and gas industry, operating and service companies, and academia are actively searching for ways to look ahead of the drill bit while drilling to reduce the risks and costs of the operation and improve the well-placement process. Optimal drilling in challenging and highly heterogeneous reservoirs, where geological data cannot adequately cons...

We have developed a full waveform inversion (FWI) algorithm for the seismic-while-drilling (SWD) dataset. Full waveform inversion is a local optimization method. To avoid the local minima, seismic data should have rich low-frequency content. However, in the real-world, seismic data lacks low-frequency content, and FWI struggles to provide accurate...

Successful implementation of emerging environmentally better technologies depends on different factors: technical, environmental, economic, and social. Here, we focus on the role of policy makers to include social conditions in the development and implementation of environmentally better technologies. The objective is to determine what social aspec...