#787: New Tremie Device Speeds Up Tailings Reclamation
Syncrude is always looking for new ways to look after the material leftover from its bitumen extraction process.
The oil sands company has recently adopted new technology that allows it to actually deposit fluid fine tailings under water.
As Jim Lorentz explains, the machine is called a Tremie Device.
Jim Lorentz is Syncrude’s team lead for Tailings Research and Development.
JIM LORENTZ: Tremie technology comes from the concrete industry where you place a slurry type material at the bottom of a body of water to basically make piles underwater. We’ve adapted that technology to place our composite tailings underwater so that it doesn’t segregate. And we can build our landforms from the bottom of the pond to the top.
The Tremie Device is a bonus to reclamation because now tailings ponds won’t have to be drained first.
JIM LORENTZ: The end result is that we can speed up the reclamation of a tailings pond by 10 to 15 years using this technology. It’s a stable landform and once it gets proud of the water, it will basically get capped and treed and planted with terrestrial material.
Jim Lorentz says the Tremie device also saves money .
Thanks today to SYNCRUDE
FOR INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
LEARN MORE ABOUT TREMIE TECHNOLOGY FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH ERIC LENEVE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE TREMIE TESTING, INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY PROGRAM #614
http://www.innovationanthology.com/programs.php?id=638&mode=full
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Sponsor
Syncrude
Program Date: 2016-06-02