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Pitt engineers using membrane distillation to recycle water used in fracking and drilling

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Engineers at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering are using membrane distillation technology to enable drillers to filter and reuse the produced water in the oil and gas industry, in agriculture, and other beneficial uses. The team is back in the lab to find a fix. Desalination. doi: 10.1016/j.desal.2021.115513.

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Univ. of Calgary team developing nanocatalysts for underground upgrading of heavy oil and bitumen; possible “next generation” of oil sands production

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Researchers at the University of Calgary are developing ultra-dispersed (UD) nanocatalysts for the in situ upgrading of heavy oil and bitumen from deep reservoirs. One of the challenges of such an approach is the placement of the catalyst deep into the heavy oil plume by transporting a catalyst suspension through the sand medium.

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Researcher urges more effort on assessment of land and water impacts of oil sands production; reference point for other unconventional fuels

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Bitumen production from the Canadian oil sands provides a point of reference that could be used to observe and better manage the land and water impacts of a rapid transition to unconventional fuels, suggests Dr. Sarah Jordaan of the Energy Technology Innovation Policy Research Group, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University.

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China’s CNOOC to acquire Canada-based Nexen for $15.1B; offshore oil and gas, oil sands, and shale gas

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CNOOC Limited—China’s largest producer of offshore crude oil and natural gas and one of the largest independent oil and gas exploration and production companies in the world—is acquiring all of the Common Shares of Canada-based energy company Nexen Inc. It is the second-largest oil producer in the UK North Sea.

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Ionic Liquids Process Recovers Bitumen from Utah Oil Sands With Little Water Use

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A team at Penn State University has demonstrated that a previously developed method employing ionic liquids (ILs) together with a nonpolar solvent such as toluene can effect a separation of bitumen from oil sands in the Western US at ambient temperatures (~25 °C), although with greater difficulty than Canadian oil sands.

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Fluid thermal processing of Mongolian oil sands

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A study by a team from the State Key Laboratory of Heavy Oil Processing, China University of Petroleum found that fluid thermal processing of. il sands is a feasible process for the production of an upgraded bitumen-derived liquid from Inner Mongolian oil sand. Oil sands exploration in Xing’an region.

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Ionic liquid-enhanced solvent extraction for oil sands bitumen shows high recovery rates, less water use and no tailing water

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Researchers from Tianjin University and the National Engineering Research Centre for Distillation Technology, Tianjin, China, report on the use of an ionic liquid (IL) with low viscosity to enhance bitumen recovery from oil sands by solvent extraction while reducing adverse impacts in the ACS journal Energy & Fuels.

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