Alberta Inventors and Inventions

A process developed by a research scientist at the University of Alberta is the basis for the technology used in extracting oil from the Athabasca tar sands near Fort McMurray. Once recently announced expansion plans are completed, Syncrude and Suncor, which now produce a third of Alberta's oil supply, will be able to boost their production to half the province's supply, with the capability of raising it even higher.

Dr. Karl A. Clark had completed his basic research in the early '30s, but the Depression and Second World War, among other factors, delayed commercial development for decades. Clark was invited to Alberta by Dr. Henry Marshall Tory, president of the university, who believed, along with Provincial Treasurer J.L. Cote, that Alberta had to diversify its economy beyond its bases in mining, agriculture, and ranching.

By the end of the First World War in 1918, oil was widely recognized as a valuable source of energy, as well as a strategic commodity and highly desirable natural resource. But the deposits of bituminous sand in northern Alberta were another matter. The dramatic and distinctive high cutbanks—some rising 250 feet—located along the Athabasca River where the Clearwater joins it, were well known to any who travelled the waterways. At the turn of the century, though, one could only get into the region either by canoe over the Methye Portage from the Saskatchewan River system, or by horse from Edmonton to Athabasca Landing and then by canoe down river to Fort McMurray; 80 miles of rapids had to be covered.

In 1921 a railway line was completed from Edmonton to the hamlet of Waterways just outside McMurray. Tar sand country could now be reached from Edmonton in 24 hours. Continuous scientific research into the deposits began, leading a half-century later to the dawn of today's oil sands industry.

The native peoples and early explorers had used the bitumen oozing from the tar sands in warm weather, for caulking their canoes. President Tory suspected that if the tar sands were ever to be developed, an entirely new technology would likely be required. From its inception, the University of Alberta had strongly supported natural resource research. It already had a research department; that would now be elevated to a funded research council. In January 1921 legislation brought the Scientific and Industrial Research Council of Alberta into being. Over the years the name changed to the Research Council of Alberta in 1929 and in 1973 to the Alberta Research Council, its current name.

Clark was a second generation Canadian whose grandparents had emigrated from the Western Isles of Scotland in 1847. He grew up in Toronto, where his father held the Chair of Modern Languages at McMaster, the Baptist university then located adjacent to University of Toronto. After graduating from McMaster with a master's degree in science, he completed a Ph.D. at the University of Illinois. He joined the Geological Survey of Canada but transferred to the Mines Branch as chief chemist when a new research lab was set up to analyze road materials.

Late in 1919, he acquired some tar sands. While "playing around"—as he used to say—with the material in the lab, he applied standard emulsion procedures; to his surprise, he got separation instead. This caused a stir within the scientific community in the Mines Branch but led to an inexplicable ban by the authorities on further experimenting. President Tory happened to be in Ottawa shortly afterwards and invited him to Alberta.

Clark arrived at the university in September 1920. He taught in the mining engineering department, which he was asked to join in 1937, eventually becoming head of the department. He continued his research into the tar sands until his death in 1966, at the age of 78. The fruits of his labour included the unravelling of their chemical mysteries and the development of a process for separation that was capable of commercial application. The hot water process, which bears his name, is still used as the basis of separation in the big plants in the north today.

In 1980, to celebrate the establishment of the Athabasca oil sands industry, the Alberta government commissioned the building of an interpretive centre at Fort McMurray. I was asked in 1981 to research Karl Clark's role, particularly in regard to the development of the separation process. This was a task close to my heart for, as his daughter, it brought back many good memories of my father. I was only a preschooler in 1932 when he finished working out all the chemical principles of separation, and I had just finished university in 1949 when the hot water separation process was proven at the government-built and -operated plant at Bitumount. The plant demonstrated that clean, dry crude could be won from the tar in commercial quantities.

The university's archives contained hundreds of letters written by my father between 1920 and 1960, collected from the engineering department and the research council. Mary Warren Campbell, a volunteer at the archives and a childhood friend who had known my father, completed this painstaking and often tedious work. Much of the story was familiar to me, but gaps had to be filled in by searching out the formal and informal reports and articles he had written. I knew a great many of the people who had worked with him—university staff, graduate students, others outside the university whose own work impacted on the story, and family. They were all very generous in telling me about their roles. Probably the most important source of information was found in the Research Council Annual Reports, 1920 to 1933 and 1943 to 1949.

Amongst the letters of 1952 we found an unexpected gem, An Account of the ATHABASCA OIL SANDS for Grade V and VI Pupils. After the First Oil Sands Conference in 1951, the tar sands were very much in the news. My father had frequently been asked by his own and neighbours' children for information about the tar sands, to use in school assignments; he probably thought "now" was the time to write something up.

He described the characteristics of conventional oil and how it was produced from well to refinery. Then he contrasted the differences in tar sand oil, particularly its viscosity, how it would be mined and then separated by using hot water, what a plant for this process would look like, and, finally, how the crude oil would be transported to Edmonton and a refinery.

My guess is that the manuscript was given to the chairman of the research council and duly passed on to the chief superintendent of schools. The superintendent's reply was rather formal and didn't really convey any sense of appreciation or interest. The assessor's comments were included. He felt the account would be helpful to both pupils and teachers, and he especially liked the description of the conventional oil industry. But he felt that, while the author was perhaps justified in presenting an optimistic view of possible future development of the Athabasca oil sands, he could tone down the statements dealing with the way oil would be shipped through a pipeline to Edmonton and the prediction that an oil sands plant would be built during the lifetime of the pupils.

The superintendent and his assessor were of course entitled to their personal opinions, but it would appear neither appreciated that their "author" was acknowledged at the time to be the leading authority on oil sands. Oil Sands Scientist, The Letters of Karl A. Clark 1920 to 1949 was published in 1989 by the University of Alberta Press. It was the first book to chronicle the scientific studies in tar sands carried out at the Research Council of Alberta and the evolution of the separation process. President Tory was probably, in greatest measure, the person responsible for initiating the work in 1921, and Karl Clark the person who saw it through. I like to think that the book tracing their fine legacy has allowed me, in some small way, to have contributed, as well.

Tar Sands Legacy