Committed to the reduction of oil sands tailings

in this
issue
VOLUME 01
ISSUE 01
SPRING 2014
cover story: Committed to the reduction of oil sands tailings // What’s in your garbage 3
staff profiles 4 // PUBLIC PRESENTATIONS 2 // recent reports 4 //
news
Alberta Innovates –
Energy and
Environment Solutions
Committed to the reduction
of oil sands tailings
Tailings are converted into a solid landscape suitable for reclamation. Photo credit: Suncor
A
lberta accounts for an overwhelming
majority (98 per cent) of Canada’s oil
reserves. Of Alberta’s total reserves, 99 per
cent (168.7 billion barrels) come from the
Athabasca oil sands. The tailings produced
when mining oil sands present an environmental
challenge and are a continuous impact of
the industry. The reality is there will always
be a need for water recycle ponds as a way
to manage process-affected water and meet
extraction water needs, but we believe there are
solutions for better tailings management.
“There is no silver bullet to reduce tailings
ponds, each mine site requires a unique suite
of technologies and site specific options to tackle
this issue,” says Richard Nelson, Senior Director,
Oil Sands Tailings. “And that’s where AI-EES
comes in.”
Our Role in Tailings Solutions
Since 2000, oil sands tailings management
has been a strategic focus for AI-EES and
its predecessor organization, the Alberta
Energy Research Institute (AERI). Our 2030
target is a 100 million cubic metres reduction
from legacy mature fine tailings. In 2012, the
changing energy and environment landscape
prompted AI-EES to propose a comprehensive
examination of tailings technology to the
fledgling Oil Sands Tailings Consortium (OSTC).
In August 2012, AI-EES in collaboration with
Canadian Oil Sands Innovation Alliance
(COSIA), released the Oil Sands Tailings
Technology Deployment Roadmap and Action
Plan. The plan provides nine different pathways
– technology roadmaps – that can be used by
industry to accelerate the implementation of
tailings solutions in Alberta. Each roadmap is
made up of a suite of technologies that provide
options for unique operating leases and mine
characteristics.
“We have this resource in Northern Alberta, that
we have to find a way to develop responsibly,”
says Alan Fair, Director, Tailings Environmental
Priority Area, COSIA. “Does the industry need
to do better? Absolutely. This study forced us
to look around the globe to see what ideas
and technologies are out there, that we can
potentially utilize to manage oil sands tailings.”
Since the release of the Action Plan, AI-EES
helped implement a number of pilot projects
that have set the stage for field demonstration
projects that could reduce tailings in the
province. Pilot projects that use the technology
suites have been in progress since early 2013.
Continued on page 2
Page 1
Facts about tailings
>Tailings are made up of
natural materials including
water, sand, fine silts, clays,
residual bitumen, salts and
soluble organic compounds.
They also include solvents
that are added to the oil sands
during the separation process
>There is currently about 77
square kilometres of oil sands
tailings ponds water in Alberta
>Currently, there is about 1
billion cubic metres of Mature
Fine Tailings (MFT) contained
in all of the tailings ponds,
with an additional 75 million
cubic metres being added
each year
>The production of one
barrel of bitumen results
in the production of about
1.5 barrels of MFT
PUBLIC
PRESENTATIONS
CERI Natural Gas
Conference Gas to Liquids
presentation
By: Duke du Plessis
March 2014, Calgary
COSIA water conference,
Oil Sands 101 workshop
Reclamation and Water
By: Brett Purdy
March 2014, Edmonton
Alberta-China Environment
Technology Workshop
Advanced Technologies for
Environmental Management
By: John Zhou
March 2014, Beijing, China
Electric Power Research
Institute
Advanced Technologies
for Environmental
Management
By: John Zhou
March 2014, Calgary
Ministry of Energy Mexican
Delegation
Carbon Capture Technology
Development and
Demonstration
By: Vicki Lightbown
March 2014, Edmonton
ADOE Taiwanese
Delegation
Carbon Capture Technology
Development and
Demonstration
By: Vicki Lightbown
March 2014, Edmonton
Pop up Consulate
Conference
Oil and Gas Innovation
in Alberta
By: Eddy Isaacs
April, 2014, Pittsburgh, US
Annual CCS Conference
CCEMC Grand Challenge
By: Mark Summers
April, 2014, Pittsburgh, US
Canada Special 2014
Managing the Future of
Water and Energy Resources
Technologies & Solutions
By: Eddy Isaacs
May 2014, Munich, Germany
Committed to the Reduction of Oil Sands Tailings Continued
What’s Next
In the next two to three years AI-EES will
continue working with industry partners,
providing third party assessment of new
processes using the Tailings Roadmap
and Action Plan. Our work will foster
collaboration and help move these pilots to
larger demonstration projects and on toward
commercialization.
• Phase I of our Inline Dewatering project will
be complete in June 2014 and a field project
will be operational by 2015 with expected
outcomes in 2016. This technology could
contribute to tailings reclamation in two
ways: treatment of legacy MFT in existing
tailing ponds as well as treatment of fresh
tailings before it even gets to the pond,
in both cases it will liberate and recycle
valuable water resources.
About the OSTC
The Oil Sands Tailings Consortium (OSTC)
was founded in December 2010 when seven
of Canada’s oil sands companies (Suncor
Energy, Syncrude Canada Ltd., Shell Canada,
Canadian Natural Resources Limited, Imperial
Oil, Total E&P Canada and Teck Resources)
• We will continue to focus on bitumen
recovery from tailings, by testing a
number of new technology developments.
These technologies will be assessed to
verify the best ways to recover valuable
bitumen from the tailings in the most
environmental, cost effective ways, adding
to the value and improving the speed of
the reclamation of the tailings ponds.
• Advancements of Electro-Kinetic
Dewatering are being studied. This
technology uses electrodes to separate
water and solids in the tailings ponds
and is showing promising results for
recycle and remediation of tailings.
The technology is expected to be
demonstrated on a larger scale in 2014.
came together to share tailings research
and technology in a unified effort to rapidly
advance tailings management. The OSTC
later became a part of the Canadian Oil Sands
Innovation Alliance (COSIA) as their Tailings
Environmental Priority Area.
New study on tailings pond seepage released
An Environment Canada
study, Profiling Oil Sands
Mixtures from Industrial
Developments and Natural
Ground-waters for Source
Identification, made the
news in February. The media
picked up on this study and in
several cases reported it was
the first study to scientifically
demonstrate tailings ponds
are seeping into groundwater
and discharging into the
Athabasca River.
“While the release of the study
is important, it’s definitely
not the first study to make
this connection,” says Brett
Purdy, AI-EES’ Senior Director,
Enhanced Ecology. “We
have been looking at tailings
seepage in Alberta for some
time, and in the four sites
where we have identified
contamination, the Government
has required the industrial
operator of the tailings pond to
take mitigation steps.”
The Environment Canada
study was primarily designed
to validate techniques to
distinguish between natural
and industrial sources of
bitumen derived organic acids
in groundwater and surface
waters. Media coverage led to
further speculation regarding
measureable effects of the
contaminants on aquatic
ecosystem health.
One challenge, Purdy points
out, is that the Environment
Canada study was not
designed to resolve regional
issues such as the relative
importance of multiple sources
of contaminants (natural and
industrial) on water quality of
the Athabasca River nor the
risk of these contaminants
to aquatic health. A study
initiated by AI-EES and cofunded with the Canadian Oil
Sands Innovation Alliance
(COSIA) will address these
complex issues.
Page 2
“Alberta really needs to begin
thinking about developing
formal discharge criteria to
manage the return of processaffected water from oil sands
development back to natural
systems,” adds Purdy.
These criteria exist for
metal mines and coal
mines in Canada and their
presence allows for the
return of remediated water
streams back to the natural
environment. AI-EES will
support Alberta Environment
and Sustainable Resource
Development in developing
these release criteria.
AI-EES also has several
tailings water treatment
initiatives underway that
potentially address the core
issue of oil sands processaffected water (OSPW) release.
For more information, visit
www.ai-ees.ca
What’s in
YOUR GARBAGE?
Waste composition study provides direction for greener Alberta communities.
A
s Canadians we produce
729 kg of waste per
person annually,1 or the
equivalent of approximately
30 bathtubs full of garbage.
As the costs of landfilling rise
and landfill space becomes
more limited, communities are
looking for less expensive and
more environmentally friendly
ways to manage their waste.
In 2006 Alberta Innovates
– Energy and Environment
Solutions (AI-EES) worked with the City of Edmonton and
Enerkem to open the first Waste-to-biofuels facility – increasing
the amount of garbage diverted from landfills in Edmonton from
60 to 90 per cent. This waste will be converted to value-added
biofuels like ethanol and methanol. Based on this success AIEES started looking at ways we could help smaller communities
around the province work together to achieve similar results.
Dr. Xiaomei Li
In an effort to develop a rural waste-to-value-added project,
Dr. Xiaomei Li, Senior Advisor, Bioenergy, at AI-EES visited
eight rural communities in Alberta to understand what it would
take for smaller towns to be able to implement projects that
could turn their garbage into value-added products. It was
quickly identified that a major barrier for small municipalities is
that they don’t really know what’s in their garbage.
“The planning and design of such integrated waste
management systems requires accurate information on the
quantity and characteristics of available waste,” says Dr. Li.
“You need to understand what’s going into the garbage.
How much is food waste? How much is plastics or glass or
beverage containers? How much yard and garden or wood
waste is going into the landfill?”
With these questions in mind, Dr. Li set out to study the
composition of garbage in Red Deer, Leduc and its surrounding
communities.
“The purpose of the study was to determine accurate, Alberta‐
specific data about the quantity and characteristics of available
waste streams from the
At the Edmonton Waste-toresidential and commercial
sectors.”
Biofuels Facility, over 100,000
tonnes of municipal solid
The goal of this one-year
project was to collect waste
waste will be converted into
samples from randomly
36 million litres of biofuels
selected trucks from various
annually. This will reduce
residential and commercial
Alberta’s carbon dioxide (CO2)
routes in rural communities
footprint by six million tonnes
and to measure the quantity,
composition, and seasonal
over the next 25 years—the
distributions of waste
equivalent of removing 42,000
generated. Results from
cars off the road every year.
the study would then guide
planning and design of an
integrated waste to‐value‐added facility for this area, turning
these different wastes, or feedstocks, as they are often called,
into valuable fuels, composts or even road building materials.
The next stage of this project will see Dr. Li working closely
with these communities to recommend the appropriate
technology selection and economic assessment for a wasteto-value-added facility.
1
(http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/16f0023x/16f0023x2013001-eng.pdf)
what they found
15.1%
27.3%
3.9%
6.6%
4.4%
What’s
in the
garbage?
9.2%
15.9%
17.6%
results from
the Red Deer Waste
Management Facility
Food
Paper
Plastics
Household Hygiene
Non-compostable organics
Yard and garden
Metals
All other waste
=
Page 3
30/year
Canadians produce 729 kg of waste per person
annually, or the equivalent of approximately 30
bathtubs full of garbage.
STAFF PROFILE // Dr. Brett Purdy, PhD
Brett is our senior director for Integrated Land Management and one of our expert technical staff helping position
Alberta as a leader in low carbon energy and exceptional water management.
Brett’s work encompasses topics as varied
as wetlands, land disturbance, biodiversity,
environmental monitoring, reclamation and
restoration. His focus is on the cumulative
effects of resource development, and their
impacts on valuable ecological services
provided by Alberta’s land and water. Brett is part of our
Water and Environmental Management team and is working
to advance new research and technology that will support
improved policy, practices and monitoring programs in the
province. The goal is to improve Alberta’s integrated resource
management, biodiversity and landscape restoration efforts.
“Energy development in the Province needs to have as
little impact on Alberta’s ecological resources as possible,”
says Brett. “While improved planning tools can minimize the
need for mitigation, increased understanding on the cause
and effect relationships of biodiversity to land disturbance
is required to make meaningful changes,” he says. “The
projects I get to work on offer long term solutions for some of
the biggest issues facing our industry.”
Where else have you worked?
I started at AI-EES in January 2013 after spending five-years
with Alberta Environment in the Oil Sands and Clean Energy
Branch, as both a manager and scientist. As a reclamation
research specialist, I worked with the research and
consulting community to implement reclamation research
programs and with government to ensure evolving policy was
supported by sound science.
Prior to joining Government, I received a PhD in Botany from
the University of Alberta and worked as a Research Associate
where I collaborated with academia on oil sands mine
reclamation research and taught courses in forestry
and conservation.
What do you like to do for fun?
I live in Edmonton with my wife and two kids. I love to play
and coach hockey. When I’m not on skates, I love to ski, hike
and scuba dive. I’ve also been known to enjoy a glass of
single malt scotch now-and-then.
Recent Reports
Overcoming the Barriers to Commercial
Co2 – Eor In Alberta, Canada
Prepared for AI-EES, by William D. Gunter
(G BACH Enterprises Incorporated) and
Herb Longworth (Amulet Solutions Ltd.)
Use of Low Grade Heat from Existing
Coal Plants in Alberta - Final Report
Prepared for AI-EES, by David Butler &
Associates Ltd.
Innovation Roadmap for Transmission
Pipeline Transportation of Petroleum
Products
Prepared for AI-EES and the Canadian
Energy Pipeline Association, by Petroleum
Technology Alliance Canada and the
Pipeline Engineering Centre of the University
of Calgary
Alberta’s Upstream Oil and Gas Assets
Inventory Study: Opportunities to Reduce
Greenhouse Gas Emissions at Existing
Distributed Facilities
Prepared by Cap-Op Energy Inc. for PTAC
Petroleum Technology Alliance Canada with
support from AI-EES
The Potential for Energy Efficiency
Improvements and Greenhouse Gas
Emission Reductions in Small & Medium
Forestry Enterprises in Alberta
Prepared for AI-EES and Western Centre
for Economic Research, by Levelton
Consultants Ltd.
Renewable Energy Opportunities in the
Oil and Gas Sector
Prepared by the Pembina Institute
Light Ends Composition in Dilbit and
Conventional Crudes
Prepared for AI-EES by OMNICON
Consultants Inc.
Recovery of Bitumen from Oil Sands
Tailings Streams and Deposits. Potential
Opportunities and Benefits
Prepared for AI-EES and the COSIA Tailings
EPA, by Alberta Innovates – Technology
Futures
Technology Opportunities to Improve the
Competitiveness of Alberta’s Oil Sands
for U.S. Refineries,
Prepared for AI-EES, by Jacobs Consultancy
Alberta Innovates – Energy and Environment Solutions (AI-EES) is a part of the research, innovation and technology implementation arm
of the Government of Alberta ministries in energy and environment. AI-EES’ focus is to bring together decision makers from government and
industry, as well as research and innovation technology organizations, to develop solutions for the key technical challenges facing Alberta’s
energy, environment and water sectors.
For more information:
ai-ees.ca
403.297.7089 • [email protected]
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