Innovation Anthology #599:
Getting the fine particles of clay and sand to release water from oil sands tailings can take a very long time.
One way to speed things up is to add flocculants – the same material used to treat drinking water.
Syncrude scientist Dr. Barry Bara explains.
DR BARRY BARA: Adding the flocculant makes these fine solids and clays settle out very quickly. So two things happen. It puts us on a quicker path to be able to use this material in the reclaimed landscape. And the other thing is that water is released and that water can be then recycled back to our extraction plant and reduce the amount of water that we actually have to draw out of the river.
Dr. Bara says the way you add the flocculants is very important. He tested two methods for Syncrude, static and dynamic mixing.
DR. BARRY BARA: Dynamic mixing is when you put the material in a vessel and you have an impeller driven by a motor that turns, and you just spin this impeller and it does the mixing. Dynamic mixing gives you much better control of the mixing that you do.
According to Dr. Barry Bara, the success of his commercial scale pilot with flocculants is good news for the oil sands industry.
Thanks today to SYNCRUDE
FOR INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER.
Guest
,
, , , ,
Sponsor
Syncrude
Program Date: 2014-03-18