Loading articles...

Making new products from bitumen

Last Updated Jan 9, 2019 at 7:40 am MDT

An oil worker holds raw sand bitumen near Fort McMurray, Alta THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

Alberta Innovates is putting $2 million toward the research of new products made from bitumen.

Bryan Helfenbaum is the Executive Director of A.I.’s Advanced Hydrocarbons Division and said while new product ideas for bitumen have been explored ‘on paper’ this is the first time they’ll start efforts to create actual products.

“Bitumen is a very unique material to Alberta. We’re really the ones to accelerate it within Alberta Innovates to ensure that there is a sustainable future for that natural resource.”

Read the full report here.

Helfenbaum said that they have chosen seven different projects which will help create products.

“We are looking at alternative carbon fibre production and other advanced carbon materials like graphenes. We are also looking at vanadium, which can be used for flow batteries in place of lithium, and also asphalt along with the ways of transporting it internationally.”

Alberta innovates is a provincially funded corporation with a mandate to “deliver 21st-century solutions for challenges facing Albertans”.