Dr. XU Zhenghe, member of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and professor at University of Alberta, Canada, visited the Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics (LICP), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), on September 28. During his visit, Professor XU delivered a lecture entitled Molecular Mechanism of Emulsion Stability and Novel Demulsification.

Professor XU Zhenghe is giving a lecture.

In his report, Professor XU first introduced the history, status quo of the exploitation of oil sand resource in Edmonton, capital city of the province of Alberta, Canada, definition, composition, distribution, mining methods (including in-situ mining and surface mining) and the problems occurred in the mining and processing of oil sand resource. Then he introduced the shortcomings of traditional mining methods and the research on the feasibility of demulsification. In the research, magnetic ethyl cellulose was applied to demulsification. The addition of magnetic substance made water drops deposit quickly to realize demulsification.

Professor XU Zhenghe graduated with his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in minerals engineering in 1982 and 1985, respectively, from Central-South Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, Changsha, China and Ph.D. in materials engineering in 1990 from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia. He joined the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at the University of Alberta as an associate professor in January 1997. After promoted to professor in 2000, he was appointed as NSERC-EPCOR-AERI Industry Research Chair in Advanced Coal Cleaning and Combustion Technology from 2002 to 2007, Canada Research Chair in Mineral Processing in 2007, and NSERC-Industry Research Chair in Oil Sands Engineering in 2008. His main research area is interfacial sciences as applied to natural resources processing and utilization. He was elected to Fellow of Canadian Academy of Engineering in 2008 and awarded APEGA Frank Spragins award in 2012.