Optimizing deposition of amended oil sand tailings products

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Surface mining of oil sands for bitumen is an important driver of the Canadian economy. The nature of surface mining is such that are large potential impacts on water resources and surface ecosystems. The ongoing challenge for the oils sands industry is to minimize these impacts and to reclaim and restore disturbed ecosystems as quickly and economically as possible. Tailings, the waste product from the bitumen extraction process, comprising sands, fines , and water, are conventionally deposited in dammed impoundments. Due to the chemistry of the extraction process, the fine fraction of the tailings is bound up with the water, and will not naturally settle out in a reasonable time frame. Consequently, oil sands operators are faced with the management of enormous volumes of these fluid fine tailings, which are too soft to reclaim, and have trapped water that if the industry could reclaim, would substantially improve both the economics and sustainability of the oil sands industry.