Fourth-year Chemical Engineering student, Sharshar is already looking ahead to a Master’s degree, and ensuring he has the necessary research experience to get him there.

Edmonton—It’s fair to say that Mohamed Sharshar is a man with a plan. As a fourth-year Chemical Engineering student, Sharshar is already looking ahead to a Master’s degree, and ensuring he has the necessary research experience to get him there.

Helping to achieving his goal, Sharshar has just received his second Undergraduate Student Research Award. Funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the award stimulates interest in research and encourages students to pursue graduate studies and careers in research or academics.

As part of the Engineering Co-op program, Sharshar is in the middle of an eight-month research work term, his second under the supervision of Murray Gray, scientific director of the Centre for Oil Sands Innovation and a professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering.

“I searched and found out what Dr. Gray has done is very practical and very relatable to my program,” Sharshar said. “I contacted him [about a four-month placement] and the second project spun off of that.”


Sharshar’s research with Gray deals with the use of supercritical water in bitumen upgrading.

“The idea is to try and use water as a solvent for helping to process bitumen,” Gray explains.

Currently, bitumen is upgraded to synthetic crude oil using more expensive methods such as hydroconversion or coking. The use of supercritical water—water that is at a temperature and pressure above its critical point, where there is no distinction between liquid and gas phases—is an enticing venture, as it allows for a higher conversion of bitumen at a lower cost.

Gray stresses that “in this case we’re talking about just the bitumen, not oil sand—there’s no sand in there at all—and water is already in the bitumen when it’s produced. So if this works it actually cuts out a process step. It doesn’t add any water to the process and makes it easier to give the water back.”

This past year Sharshar took Gray’s oilsands upgrading course (ChE 522), which he says really brought the process full-circle when he returned to the lab.

“You understand things better when you do research. It’s different than just sitting there in the classroom. You have freedom, but at the same time it’s a challenge,” Sharshar said. “Research is the first step to finding things out, summarizing things, trying to understand why you’re getting the results you’re getting—that’s why I like it.”

“Mohamed is interested in graduate studies and this gives him a real step up to go into a master’s or a PhD program later,” said Gray. “This gives him actual experience in doing research, which is a real learning experience for him since he’s interested in a career in R and D in this area. It’s more than just a paycheque for him. He’s got a multi-year plan, and this is part of it.”

Sharshar, conscious of the criteria that is required to apply for scholarships at the graduate level, is currently working on a paper with Gray to be published in the coming months in the Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering.