The dependence on oil and the fact that petroleum conventional reservoirs are becoming depleted direct attentions toward unconventional-and harder to access-reservoirs. Among those, heavy and extremely heavy oil reservoirs and tar sands form a considerable portion of all petroleum resources. Conventional thermal and thermocatalytic refining methods are not affordable choices in some cases, as they demand a considerable energy investment. On the other hand, electron irradiation, as a novel technology, provides more promising results in heavy oil upgrading. Electron irradiation, as a method of delivering energy to a target molecule, ensures that most of the energy is absorbed by the molecule electronic structure. This leads to a very efficient generation of reactive species, which are capable of initiating chemical reactions. In contrast, when using thermal energy, only a small portion of the energy goes into the electronic structure of the molecule; therefore, bond rupture will result only at high energy levels. The effect of electron irradiation on different heavy petroleum fluids is investigated in this study. Radiation-induced physical and chemical changes of the fluids have been evaluated using different analytical instruments. The results show that high energy electron particles intensify the cracking of heavy hydrocarbons into lighter species. Moreover, irradiation is seen to limit any post-treatment reactions, providing products of higher stability. Depending on the characteristics of the radiolyzed fluid, irradiation may change the distribution pattern of the products, or the radiolysis process may follow the same mechanism that thermal cracking does. In addition to that, we have studied the effectiveness of different influencing variables such as reaction temperature, absorbed dose values, and additives on radiolytic reactions. More specifically, the following subjects are addressed in this study: *Radiation?induced chain reactions of heavy petroleum fluids *Complex hydrocarbon cracking mechanism *High and low temperature radiolysis *Synergetic effects of different chemical additives in radiolysis reactions *Time stability of radiation products

Recently, based on the physics of viscosity, we developed a new technology, which utilizes electric or magnetic fields to change the rheology of complex fluids to reduce the viscosity, while keeping the temperature unchanged. The method is universal and applicable to all complex fluids with suspended particles of nano-meter, sub-micrometer, or micrometer size. Completely different from the traditional viscosity reduction method, raising the temperature, this technology is energy-efficient, as it only requires small amount of energy to aggregate the suspended particles. In this thesis, we will first discuss this new technology in detail, both in theory and practice. Then, we will report applications of our technology to energy science research. Presently, 80% of all energy sources are liquid fuels. The viscosity of liquid fuels plays an important role in energy production and energy conservation. With an electric field, we can reduce the viscosity of asphalt-based crude oil. This is important and useful for heavy crude oil and off-shore crude oil production and transportation. Especially, since there is no practical way to raise the temperature of crude oil inside the deepwater pipelines, our technology may play a key role in future off-shore crude oil production. Electrorehology can also be used to reduce the viscosity of refinery fuels, such as diesel fuel and gasoline. When we apply this technology to fuel injection, the fuel droplets in the fuel atomization become smaller, leading to faster combustion in the engine chambers. As the fuel efficiency of internal combustion engines depends on the combustion speed and timing, the fast combustion produces much higher fuel efficiency. Therefore, adding our technology on existing engines improves the engine efficiency significantly. A theoretical model for the engine combustion, which explains how fast combustion improves the engine efficiency, is also presented in the thesis. / Physics