Bitumen Beyond Combustion (Advanced Hydrocarbons)

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(Click on this image to go to the Bitumen Beyond Combustion [BBC] White Paper)

The BBC program determines the potential of Alberta oil sands components for producing non-combustion products (i.e., products that are not fuels, such as gasoline, diesel, and heating oil). Examples of BBC products could include carbon fibres, graphene, polyurethanes, polycarbonates, controlled-release fertilizers and high-quality asphalts.

What’s New?

The BBC White Paper was prepared by our Clean Resources experts John Zhou, Paolo Bomben, Murray Gray and Bryan Helfenbaum. It lays out how the Alberta oil sands can contribute to achieving net-zero goals and create products that are valued in the world. 

Program Objectives

The BBC program’s goals are to enhance and protect the value and profitability of oil sands operations, through:

  • diversifying the uses of oil sands constituents, resulting in high-value products that can be made by or in partnership with Alberta’s oil sands industry
  • accommodating increased oil sands production in Alberta by creating new and/or expanded markets for oil sands constituents and their derived products
  • offsetting a potential decline in the demand for oil sands based combustion products like fuels

The objectives of the program are to:

  • determine whether the organic constituents of oil sands have considerable global market potential as feed-stocks for non-combustion products
  • assess the techno-economic feasibility of producing non-combustion products from components of bitumen
    identify knowledge, technology and market gaps for BBC products
  • develop projects to develop BBC production projects from R&D to demonstration phases that will lead to commercialization of the technologies.

BBC funded programs (2019)

See the funding results from the 2018 open call.

BBC Research Reports/Media/Webinars