Suncor Energy (French: Suncor Énergie) is a Canadian integrated energy company based in Calgary, Alberta. It specializes in production of synthetic crude from oil sands. In the 2020 Forbes Global 2000, Suncor Energy was ranked as the 252nd-largest public company in the world.Until 2010, Suncor marketed products and services to retail customers in Ontario through a downstream network of 280 company-owned, and 200 customer-operated retail and Diesel fuel sites, primarily in Ontario under the Sunoco brand (owing to Suncor having originally been established as a subsidiary of Sunoco). In 2009, Suncor acquired the former Crown corporation Petro-Canada, which replaced the Sunoco brand across its existing outlets. Suncor also markets through a retail network of Shell and ExxonMobil branded outlets in Colorado.
High-entropy alloys (HEAs), particularly those with an A2+B2 dual-phase structure, offer balanced strength and toughness, leading to superior and well-adjustable wear resistance. The effect of titanium, known to promote the formation of hard intermetallic phases and enhance mechanical properties, on A2+B2 dual-phase HEAs remains less understood. In this work, selecting a representative AlCr3Fe3Ni alloy with A2+B2 phases as the base alloy, we systematically investigated the phase evolution induced by various amounts of Ti addition and their differential effects on the sliding wear and solid-particle erosion of AlCr3Fe3NiTix HEAs (x = 0-1.5, molar ratio). Microstructural analysis reveals that Ti addition promotes the formation of AlNi2Ti-type L21 and (Fe,Cr)2Ti-type C14 Laves phases, both of which strengthen the alloys at the expense of plasticity. However, a low Ti content (i. e., x = 0.2) helps improve both yield strength and plasticity, due to the solid-solution strengthening effect and refinement of grain size. Micro-indentation and scratching tests demonstrate that the C14 Laves phase exhibits the highest hardness but the lowest toughness, whereas the A2+B2 dual-phase structure possesses the highest toughness but the lowest hardness. The L21 phase displays intermediate properties between the two. Sliding wear and dry-sand erosion tests reveal that moderate Ti additions enhance wear resistance through solid-solution strengthening, hard-phase reinforcement, and oxidation-induced surface protection. However, erosion resistance deteriorates with increasing Ti content, primarily due to lowered toughness under impact conditions. This study elucidates the dual roles of Ti-induced hard yet brittle phases, i.e., beneficial for sliding wear resistance but detrimental to erosion performance in impact-involving environments requiring higher toughness. The findings provide valuable insights into structure-property relationships for the design of advanced structural and tribomaterials.
The dissolution behavior of iron oxides in high-temperature water containing various dissolved species is a critical factor for understanding and predicting the conditions that control flow-accelerated corrosion (FAC). Predicting the stability of passivating films under steam-generating conditions, which may give rise to FAC, requires an accurate thermodynamic model that is capable of predicting the solubility of film materials, particularly magnetite (Fe3O4), hematite (Fe2O3) and iron oxyhydroxides (FeOOH). This is essential for accurate corrosion prediction, particularly in applications such as steam generation for hydrocarbon recovery from oil sands, water/steam cycle boilers, power plants, boiler feedwater systems, etc. In this study, available experimental solubility data have been evaluated for iron oxides/hydroxides, and a comprehensive thermodynamic model has been developed using the Mixed Solvent Electrolyte (MSE) framework for temperatures up to 600 K and pressures exceeding 50 MPa. The MSE model reproduces solubility in the presence of various inorganic ions and additives used in all-volatile treatments (AVT) wherein volatile alkalizing agents are employed under either reducing conditions (i.e., AVT(R)) or oxidizing conditions (i.e., AVT(O)). The accuracy of model predictions is, in general, consistent with the inherent uncertainty of experimental solubility data while the distribution of errors is a function of pH and temperature, with elevated uncertainty observed for neutral and alkaline solutions. Further, the MSE model has been applied to predict magnetite stability across various AVT(R) scenarios with different dosages of alkaline and non-alkaline reducing agents (i.e., hydrazine, hydrogen) to provide a thermodynamic foundation for controlling environmental variables in mitigating AVT(R) flow-accelerated corrosion risks. This work is especially relevant to the Canadian oil sands industry, in particular to industrial steam generation applications such as oilfield once-through steam generation systems, where high temperatures and high pH conditions affect corrosion behavior.
Photodynamic inactivation offers a broad‐spectrum anti‐pathogen strategy for agriculture but requires effective delivery of the photodynamic activators to enable efficacy. Herein, we demonstrate that nanovesicles based on sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate (SDBS) and cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB), prepared with modifiers to either enhance or reduce the stability of the bilayer membrane, can encapsulate and improve the functionality of magnesium chlorophyllin (Mg‐chl). SDBS/CTAB nanovesicles with sizes as small as ∼90 nm can be fabricated with encapsulation efficiencies of >60% for Mg‐chl. The incorporation of unsaturated modifiers into nanovesicle membranes enables triggered Mg‐chl release upon re‐wetting, whereas the introduction of hydrophobic moieties substantially slows Mg‐chl release via a more diffusion‐governed mechanism. Nanovesicles enabled substantially higher light‐activated killing of the plant pathogen P. syringae in simulated field conditions, with rapid binding and/or bacterial uptake observed within five mins of nanovesicle exposure. In addition, nanovesicles facilitated improved Mg‐chl penetration into plant roots. This combination of enhanced anti‐bacterial activity and tunable photosensitizer uptake offers promise to deliver photosensitizing agents or other functional hydrophilic bioactives for improved crop protection.
Accurate estimation of hopper dumping level is essential for effective supervisory and regulatory control in oil sands ore preparation plants. Specifically, the estimated level can be employed within a regulatory control mechanism to ensure safe hopper operation by preventing hopper overfilling events and apron feeder dry-run scenarios, while a supervisory control framework could be incorporated to optimize the dumping time. Vision-based sensing for hopper level estimation provides a non-intrusive alternative to conventional instrumentation; however, its reliability degrades under industrial conditions where oil-sands stain on the hopper walls and reduce visual separability between background hopper structure and foreground oil-sands material. Under such appearance-challenging conditions, classical image segmentation pipelines require extensive post-processing and remain highly sensitive to visual variability, resulting in unreliable interface extraction and inaccurate level estimates. This work investigates image-to-image domain translation as a means of improving interface extraction for vision-based hopper level soft sensing. We propose a task-oriented, boundary-aligned translation framework that directly maps raw RGB hopper images to a semantic material interface representation, which requires no post-processing and is explicitly optimized for level estimation and control. Experimental results on industrial hopper imagery demonstrate that the proposed approach produces interpretable interface representations and yields accurate level estimates suitable for closed-loop control, providing an efficient alternative to classical multi-stage vision pipelines.
Fire blight, caused by Erwinia amylovora, severely affects apple and pear orchards on a global scale. Conventional treatment includes the application of antibiotics such as streptomycin during bloom, which promotes resistance. Photodynamic inactivation (PDI) is based on the light-induced and photosensitizer-mediated overproduction of reactive oxygen species for killing microbes. This study develops PDI using the natural photosensitizer sodium magnesium chlorophyllin (Chl) from the laboratory to field application. Laboratory experiments showed commercial-ready SUN-D products (Chl + EDTA) were highly effective against E. amylovora (395 nm LED, total kill at 53.2 J cm-2), regardless of streptomycin resistance phenotype. No resistance to Chl developed after 15 treatment cycles. Molecular dynamics simulations suggest that EDTA lowers the energy barrier for chlorin e6, enhancing membrane penetration. Field trials at two locations using sunlight illumination showed that SUN-D controlled blossom blight comparably to antibiotics. Photodynamic inactivation with SUN-D offers a promising, resistance-independent addition to current fire blight management strategies.
