Innovation Anthology #203:

Download MP3 Link

Back in the 1920’s, Dr. Karl Clark’s invention of hot water separation paved the way for today’s development of the Alberta’s oil sands.

Now scientists like Roy Coates at the Alberta Research Council are following in Clark’s footsteps as they look for new technologies to remove that sticky bitumen from solid rock or carbonate formations.

ROY COATES: That’s right. It’s almost like starting at the beginning when we started looking at research on oil sands. We’re starting off looking at characterizing what the carbonate reservoir is, trying to understand what they look like, and then getting an idea of what sort of recovery processes we could probably use on them.

Bitumen in carbonate formations lies too deep to surface mine like oil sands. And as Roy Coates explains, it’s too thick to gush out of the ground.

ROY COATES: It is a bitumen. It doesn’t flow naturally. You have to heat it or do something to it to make it flow. So initially we’re looking at can we apply the same sort of processes which we’re using in oil sand in carbonates? So that will be the first thing that we’ll be looking at. Of course we also have some novel ideas we’ll also be looking at.

That was engineer Roy Coates.

Thanks today to the Alberta Research Council

I’M CHERYL CROUCHER

Guest

,

, , , ,

Sponsor

Alberta Research Council

Established as the first provincial research organization in Canada, the Alberta Research Council is 85 years old. The Alberta Research Council (ARC) develops and commercializes technologies to give customers a competitive advantage. A leader in innovation, ARC provides solutions globally to the energy, life sciences, agriculture, environment, forestry and manufacturing sectors.
ARC performs about five per cent of the roughly $1.5 billion in R&D done in Alberta each year, and generates revenues of approximately $84 million per year. ARC operates from five sites across the province in Edmonton, Calgary, Vegreville and Devon and employs more than 600 highly-skilled people.

In January 2010, under the new Alberta Innovation Framework, the Alberta Research Council was restructured and incorporated into the new provincial agency Alberta Innovates Technology Futures.

Program Date: 2009-02-18