Innovation Anthology #513:

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Water from snow melt has a very different isotopic signature than water that was used in processing bitumen.

Dr. Lee Barbour from the University of Saskatchewan says his research team is identifying these isotopes. And this will help determine them how water moves through reclaimed sites in the oil sands.

DR. LEE BARBOUR: So it’s a very exciting project. The student has been gathering thousands of these samples across the site. And many of the samples collected by Syncrude personnel on our behalf, we analyze them and now they are starting to compile this data base.
And so it will give us a catalogue so when we go to sample these landforms we can say okay, is that snow melt water? Is that recent new water moving through the landscape, or is that old water? Is that water that was there because of the mine process affected water or is it in fact really old water from the shale when they first dug it up as overburden when they were doing the mining? So it gives you a template against which you can match the sample you have now against these sort of archetypes of isotopic signatures that would be associated with the particular origin of that water.

Dr. Barbour says this will help predict if and when salts and other contaminants might end up in wetlands.

Thanks today to SYNCRUDE

I’M CHERYL CROUCHER

Dr. Lee Barbour holds the NSERC-Syncrude Industry Research Chair in Hydro-Geological Characterization of Oil Sands Mine Closure Landforms

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Syncrude

Program Date: 2012-11-15