Team:British Columbia/Human Practices/Industry

From 2012.igem.org

Conference call with Alberta Innovates – Technology Futures AITF (Karen Budwill) and Oil Sands Leadership Initiative OSLI (John Vidmar, Nicolas Choquette-Levy)

In Alberta, current upgrading and refining processes aim to reduce viscosity and desulfurize crude oil to facilitate transport by pipeline.

Presently, OSLI does not possess infrastructure for the utilization of biological systems such as bioreactors or emulsifiers. However, this is an area of interest for them and could be implemented in a time span of approximately 5 years. There is also an interest in screening tailings ponds for new organisms or genes encoding parts capable of refining crude oil.

Our AITF and OSLI collaborators will look into the economic and environmental costs of refining oil, as well as our project's potential impact on industry and applications other than desulfurization.