Bitumen characterization during pulse plasma separation process**

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Canada has approximately 2400 billion barrels of bitumen that is considered as the world's largest **oilsands deposits. Approximately 5 billion barrels of bitumen were already recovered and **approximately 174 billion barrels of bitumen are recoverable by using current technology. The **conventional technology includes surface mining and hot water extraction and in-situ bitumen **extraction such as cyclic steam simulation and steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD). Although **these processes are using commercially, the extensive mining and extraction of bitumen from oil **sands has made the environment more vulnerable including a large amount of water consumption, land disturbance, tailings ponds footprint and green-house gas emissions. Tailings treatment has caused increasing concern in recent years among these issues. More research is necessary to develop more sustainable and environmentally viable technology to recover bitumen from oilsands deposits. 3P **Technology Corporation has developed a process to separate the bitumen, clay-water and sands by **using modulated electricity at 30 Celsius without adding any chemicals, heat and agitation to the **material. This is called the pulse plasma process, hereafter called 3P. Following 3P treatment, **the bitumen floats to the top of the vessel as foam, clay-water stay as a middle layer, above the **sand layer. The bitumen recovered has comparable properties to the conventional bitumen. However, **the propose technology is in the early stage and it requires more systematic study to advance the **technology in the field. The goal of this project is to determine chemical changes occur in the **bitumen because of the 3P's pulse plasma process. Different analytical techniques such as 1H NMR **(proton nuclear magnetic resonance) spectrometer, 13C NMR (carbon NMR), FTIR (Fourier transform **infrared spectrometer, elemental analyser, density meter, refractometer, ESR (electron spin **resonance) spectrometer will be used to investigate the chemical changes. ********