A scientist seeks to answer this pressing environmental question. (From the archive)
Heather Dettman has spent nearly two decades taking her lab coat on and off at a federal research complex located on 1 Oil Patch Dr., a right turn off Derrick Drive in the Alberta town of Devon. For much of her career, the petroleum engineer has been studying efficient ways to clean the oil from the sands, pulling processed bitumen out of the water. “Now we’re throwing that nice clean oil back in and seeing what it does,” she says.
“We’re trying to figure out if it’s different worse or different better. And the answer is: it depends.” Dettman’s findings seem to differ from a major study after the Kalamazoo disaster, by the United States National Academy of Sciences. It says diluted bitumen tends to sink more quickly, an observation based more on density than viscosity. The lighter diluent partially evaporates from the dilbit, which makes the remaining mixture heavier and more prone to sink.
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