Role of solid wettability in two processes : bubble generation from porous media and froth treatment in processing oil sands
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Solid wettability plays an important role in many industrial processes. Two examples of processes dependent on solid wettability are: Bubble generation from porous media (project one) and the bitumen froth treatment process in the recovery of oil from oil sands (project two). Project one. Bubble size has a profound effect on flotation efficiency controlling particle collection and froth stability. Models of bubble generation at a rigid sparger usually include a wettability effect (i.e., contact angle). The role of sparger wettability on bubble formation was examined using three rigid spargers exhibiting water contact angles of 0, 64 and >90°. The wettability was varied by heating the sparger, and the contact angle was determined by the Washburn and modified Washburn methods. By measuring permeability, it was determined that heating had no effect on sparger pore structure. The results showed no detectable wettability effect on bubble formation over the practical operating range of column flotation. The lack of wettability effect may be attributed to the highly irregular morphology of the sparger surface. The bubble size, it was shown, can be predicted by using the concept of sparger equivalent pore diameter and active pore number, which are estimated by a back-calculation routine. Project two. Production of oil from oil sand deposits in northern Alberta involves open pit mining, mixing the ore with water, extraction of bitumen from the slurry by a flotation-related process (Hot Water Extraction Process), removal of water and solids from the froth formed (froth treatment process), and upgrading the heavy bitumen to liquid hydrocarbons. The froth treatment process to remove fine solids and water from the bitumen froth depends on the wettability of the solids. Fine solids were extracted from samples of bitumen froth using heptane. A mixture of heptane and toluene (diluent) was used to study fine solid wettability. The contact angle (sessile drop method) and partition of the fine solids among the aqueous, diluent and interphase regions were determined. The effect of diluent composition, sample drying, and surface washing was examined. The partition of the particles correlated well with their wettability, and the results helped interpret observations from plant practice.
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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 | 0.001 |
| 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 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| 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".