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96568 WATER MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES AT THE WORLD’S LARGEST INTEGRATED OIL SANDS MINING AND REFINING COMPLEX.

Product Number: 51300-96568-SG
ISBN: 96568 1996 CP
Author: Michael E. Rogers, David Ferguson, Mike MacKinnon
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The world’s largest oil sands mining and bitumen upgrading complex (150 million tonnes of ore to produce 75 million barrels of sweet crude per year)is operated in Northern Alberta, Canada. The company’s license to operate prohibits the discharge of any process affected water from the site. With an annual raw water import of approximately 34 million cubic metres, the company’s water management program has been limited to the impounding of the waste water. The impounded volume has grown to over 350 million cubic metres and will continue to grow in future years. The storage of this waste water (contaminated with sand, fines, hydrocarbons and salts) is governed by the storage space that is made available by the mine plan, and the need to maintain sufficiently low suspended solids water for recycling in the process. In addition, the final reclamation of the site, on abandonment of operations, requires restoration of the land to an environmentally acceptable condition, and it is important that the quality of the water associated with the various areas is not limiting to this goal. This paper discusses the operation as well as research and development efforts that are in place to optimize the water management plans. Some of the areas that must be addressed include aspects of corrosion and scaling control, water balances and maintenance of water quality. To aid in this, a model using High-Performance Numeric Computation and Visualization Software has been developed. Also some impacts from alternative tailings management approaches will be discussed. Keywords: oil sands, tailings, modeling, water balance, reuse, zero discharge, tine tails, bitumen, conservation, mining, Alberta, Syncrude.
The world’s largest oil sands mining and bitumen upgrading complex (150 million tonnes of ore to produce 75 million barrels of sweet crude per year)is operated in Northern Alberta, Canada. The company’s license to operate prohibits the discharge of any process affected water from the site. With an annual raw water import of approximately 34 million cubic metres, the company’s water management program has been limited to the impounding of the waste water. The impounded volume has grown to over 350 million cubic metres and will continue to grow in future years. The storage of this waste water (contaminated with sand, fines, hydrocarbons and salts) is governed by the storage space that is made available by the mine plan, and the need to maintain sufficiently low suspended solids water for recycling in the process. In addition, the final reclamation of the site, on abandonment of operations, requires restoration of the land to an environmentally acceptable condition, and it is important that the quality of the water associated with the various areas is not limiting to this goal. This paper discusses the operation as well as research and development efforts that are in place to optimize the water management plans. Some of the areas that must be addressed include aspects of corrosion and scaling control, water balances and maintenance of water quality. To aid in this, a model using High-Performance Numeric Computation and Visualization Software has been developed. Also some impacts from alternative tailings management approaches will be discussed. Keywords: oil sands, tailings, modeling, water balance, reuse, zero discharge, tine tails, bitumen, conservation, mining, Alberta, Syncrude.
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