Fate and transport of process affected water in out-of-pit tailings ponds in the oil sands industry in Canada

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The oil sands industry presently produces 400 million barrels of oil annually and is expected to increase to 1,825 million barrels by 2030. Each barrel of oil produced is accompanied by 1.25 m3 of tailings. This corresponds to an increase in tailings production from 500 to 2,280 million m3 annually from now to 2030. Current tailings management plans include the construction of out-of-pit tailings ponds for the storage and disposal of tailings and associated process-affected (PA) water. A challenge faced in the design of these out-of-pit tailings ponds is the presence of regionally occurring buried sand channels that may act as preferential flow paths of PA water seepage. Preliminary modeling predicts the infiltration of PA seepage into the adjacent sand channels, however the extent of this impact is poorly understood.