Innovation Anthology #600:
There are two objectives to separating water from oil sands tailings so the leftover sand and clay can settle.
According to Syncrude scientist Dr. Barry Bara, one is to recycle water
The other is to dry out the fine tailings so they can be used in reclaiming the mined landscapes.
One method Syncrude uses is called “rim ditching”.
DR BARRY BARA: Rim ditching is a technique where you want to take this FFT and turn it into material that will eventually be able to be used in a reclamation scenario. What you do is you take the FFT out of the pond and you mix the flocculant with the fluid fine tailings. For rim ditching, you pour a huge pit full of this material.
So what happens is when this pit is poured, any water that comes to the top is allowed to flow off, and then a crust forms on top. And then once this crust forms ,you go and you dig a ditch around the perimeter around the deposit Then any other water that comes out of the deposit flows to the ditch and flows out. So eventually in time most of the water will flow out.
Dr. Barry Bara says rim ditching is one of several methods Syncrude uses to dewater tailings.
Thanks today to Syncrude
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I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
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Syncrude
Program Date: 2014-03-20