Understanding the Demulsification of Water-in-Diluted Bitumen Froth Emulsions
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Demulsification of water-in-diluted bitumen froth emulsions is greatly affected by the presence of solids in the emulsions. In this paper, the wettability, composition, and particle size distribution of the solids extracted from bitumen froth emulsions and diluted bitumen after demulsification, in the absence and presence of a demulsifier, were investigated using partitioning tests, X-ray diffraction, and scanning electron microscopy. It was found that the application of the demulsifier assisted in the removal of water-wet solids, with the main components of the solids in the diluted bitumen being siderite and clays. The median particle size of the solids ( D 50 ) was reduced from 8 μm in the bitumen froth emulsions to less than 2 μm in the diluted bitumen phase after the use of a demulsifier in the diluted bitumen froth treatment. The presence of fine solids in the diluted bitumen froth increased the water/bitumen interfacial tension and increased the difficulty of demulsification because the fines are biwettable and adsorb strongly at the water/bitumen interface. The effect of solids on diluent loss to the settled water and solids phase after demulsification was also studied using model emulsions. The diluent loss was found to increase with the solids content of the emulsions. At the same solids content and composition, the diluent losses increased with the fine solids content of the solids. The application of the demulsifier led to a greater diluent loss, and the loss increased with the demulsifier dosage. The results from the diluent loss studies revealed that diluent loss is caused by the adsorption of diluent on the solids. The target of demulsification of water-in-diluted bitumen froth emulsions is to achieve clean and dry diluted bitumen (<1.5% water and <0.6% solids) and to keep the bitumen/diluent losses to the settled water and solids phase minimized. In addition to dewatering, the demulsifiers must change the wettability of the solids and/or disperse the bitumen/solids aggregates to reach lower bitumen/diluent losses and keep a higher water and solids removal efficiency in the demulsification of water-in-diluted bitumen froth emulsions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".