Commercialisation of Bioreactor Process Technology

随着全球轻质原油储量的生产预计将持续约50年，有必要开发替代燃料资源，如北美的重质油砂资源。然而，从油砂中提取和加工会产生大量的废水(尾矿)，这些废水必须储存在巨大的沉淀池中。尾矿库有几个环境方面的问题。首先，它们会产生大量的生物温室气体。其次，它们对细粒尾矿固体的固结(沉降)非常缓慢，这可能需要数十年的时间。第三，尾矿的储存带来了巨大的环境和经济风险，因为废水中含有高浓度的有毒化合物，称为环烷酸(Nas)。NAS是一种复杂的羧酸混合物，对包括人类在内的许多生物体都有高度毒性。NAS还堵塞/腐蚀管道/加工设备，给该行业造成进一步污染和数十亿美元的损失。因此，消除NA污染对全球经济、环境和人类健康具有重要意义。微生物处理NAS具有明显的成本-环境优势。然而，Nas的转化是复杂的，受微生物相互作用、生物地球化学因素和Nas的物理化学性质的综合影响。我们的研究对目前油砂生产废水的处理技术有了很大的进步。在UOE，我们开发了一种新的微生物生物反应器工艺技术，该技术已被证明是成功的中试和大规模试验。我们已经证明，我们的技术可以快速提高沉淀率，从而增加澄清废水的比例，这些废水可能会回收到工艺中。我们的技术还可以大规模应用，在处理后的几天内快速生物修复和解毒至少两种不同工艺饲料中的环烷酸(NAS)。然而，由于每个操作员使用不同的NA提取方法，因此产生的废水将具有不同的物理化学特性，并且将包含不同的NA成分/浓度。因此，进一步测试我们的生物反应器技术(在工业规模上)与来自所有油砂公司的不同油砂废水流有关是至关重要的。我们提议的项目包括设立一个为期两天的研讨会，邀请来自整个行业的代表，包括目前在艾伯塔省运营的所有油砂公司的代表，监管机构(艾伯塔省环境)和加拿大油砂创新联盟(COSIA)的成员。研讨会的总体目标将是促进国际合作，并使我们的技术获得油砂行业的支持，作为该行业一些关键优先事项的具有成本效益的解决方案。研讨会将被用作一个焦点，向业界展示我们的技术的成本效益和广泛的实施简便性。我们将委托顾问对将我们的技术扩大到工业规模并在油砂公司部署的技术和经济可行性进行评估。预计，如果成功，该项目将使COSIA和该部门能够纳入和采用我们的技术，同时由监管机构(艾伯塔省环境)对该技术进行验证。这将为与该行业合作的联合行业项目(JIP)提供一个平台，以进一步测试技术并促进进一步的商业化发展。总而言之，我们的新技术将使运营商能够回收废水，减少处理所需的淡水抽取量；提高沉降率，从而减少尾矿库的存储量，同时降低资本/存储成本和相关的环境/经济风险。

With worldwide production of light crude oil reserves expected to last ~50 yrs, there is a need to exploit alternative fuel resources e.g. the heavy oil sands resources in North America. However, extraction and processing from oil sands, results in the production of large volumes of wastewaters (tailings) that have to be stored in vast settling ponds. There are several environmental concerns with tailings ponds. Firstly, they produce vast amounts of biogenic greenhouse gases. Secondly, they have very slow consolidation (settling) of the fine tailings solids, which may take decades. Thirdly, the storage of tailings poses huge environmental and economic risks from pollution incidents due to the presence of high concentrations of toxic compounds in the wastewaters known as naphthenic acids (NAs). NAs are complex mixtures of carboxylic acids that are highly toxic to many organisms including humans. NAs also block/ corrode pipes/ processing equipment causing further pollution and billion-dollar losses to the industry. Thus, removing NA contamination is important to the global economy, environment and human health. Microbial treatment of NAs has clear cost-environmental advantages. However, the transformation of NAs is complex and influenced by a combination of microbial interactions, biogeochemical factors and the physical-chemical properties of the NAs. Our research has contributed a significant advance to current technologies for treating oil sands process wastewaters. At UoE, we have developed a novel microbial bioreactor process technology that has proved successful with intermediate and large-scale trials. We have shown that our technology rapidly increases sedimentation rates thus increasing the proportion of clarified wastewater that could potentially be recycled back into the process. Our technology can also be applied on a large-scale to rapidly bioremediate and detoxify naphthenic acids (NAs) from at least two different process feeds within days of treatment. However, since each operator uses a different NA extraction method, the resulting wastewaters will have different physicochemical characteristics and will contain different NA compositions/ concentrations. It is therefore, crucial to further test our bioreactor technology (on an industrial-scale) in relation to the different oil sands wastewater streams from all oil sands companies. Our proposed project involves setting up a 2-day workshop with invited delegates from across the sector, including representatives from all the oil sands companies currently in operation in Alberta, the Regulator (Alberta Environment) and also members of the Canadian Oil Sands innovation Alliance (COSIA). The overall aim of the workshop would be to foster international collaboration and allow our technology to gain support from the oil sands industry as a cost-effective solution to a number of the industry's key priorities. The workshop will be used as a focus to demonstrate to the industry the cost-benefits and widespread ease of implementation of our technology. We will commission consultants to conduct an evaluation of the technical and economic feasibility of scaling-up our technology to an industrial scale for deployment across the oil sands companies. It is anticipated that, if successful, the project will enable inclusion and adoption of our technology by COSIA and the sector in conjunction with validation of the technology by the Regulator (Alberta Environment). This will provide a platform for a joint industry project (JIP) in collaboration with the sector to further test the technology and facilitate further commercialisation development. In conclusion, our novel technology will allow operators to recycle wastewater, reduce the amount of freshwater abstraction required for processing; increase sedimentation rates, thus reducing the amount of stored tailings with a concomitant reduction in capital/ storage costs and associated environmental/economic risks.