Can Bitumen Pellets Make Oil-By-Rail Safer?

A Canadian engineer and his team accidentally discovered a way
that could make transporting heavy Alberta crude by rail much more
safely. In fact, the bitumen pellets that Ian Gates and his
co-workers came up with could make oil transportation safer than
pipelines. Gates, a professor at the University of Calgary’s
Schulich School of Engineering, and his team were working on ways
to make the bitumen extracted from the oil sands of Alberta less
viscous, but instead they inadvertently found a way to make it more
viscous, CBC reports. Then they…

A Canadian engineer and his team accidentally discovered a way
that could make transporting heavy Alberta crude by rail much more
safely. In fact, the bitumen pellets that Ian Gates and his
co-workers came up with could make oil transportation safer than
pipelines. Gates, a professor at the University of Calgary’s
Schulich School of Engineering, and his team were working on ways
to make the bitumen extracted from the oil sands of Alberta less
viscous, but instead they inadvertently found a way to make it more
viscous, CBC reports. Then they…