High Fines Sand Tailings as a Novel Oil Sands Tailings Treatment Technology

高细砂尾矿作为新型油砂尾矿处理技术

• 批准号: 561786-2021
• 负责人: Bajic, Jelena
• 金额: $ 10.93万
• 依托单位: Northern Alberta Institute of Technology
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Applied Research and Development Grants - Level 3
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2021-01-01 至 2022-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=724438
• 关键词: Fines; Sand; Tailings; Novel; Oil

Extracting bitumen from Canada's oil sands generates large volumes of fluid fine tailings (FFT), a waste material that presents significant environmental and economic challenges to consolidation and remediation. With over 1,270 Mm³ of tailings inventory as of 2019, finding a responsible solution to tailings management is a top priority for the Canadian mining industry. Chemical company BASF has developed a novel technology that combines coarse sand grains with FFT into material composed of fine particles filling the interstitial voids between successively larger particles. The fractal nature of the resultant substrate - known as "High Fines Sand Tailings" (HFST) - closely resembles the original oil sand ore. Product development testing at BASF and independently verified at NAIT have shown that a completely integrated sand/fines matrix is created with HFST, and much more resistant to shear-intensive process conditions than other sand-based tailings treatment strategies such as Composite Tailings (CT). Unlike CT, where the undesirable segregation of fines from the treated material is common, high release water clarity is a hallmark of the BASF technology. While HFST has been demonstrated to give optimal performance under tightly controlled laboratory-scale conditions, it must also be proven to excel under field conditions. Several tailings properties, such as solid content, clay fraction, and water chemistry, are understood to impact the flocculation process. However, tailings operations are often run with little to no process control, meaning that any viable treatment method must be robust and provide good performance over a wide range of conditions. The present study focuses on determining the operating window for HFST, then applying the learnings in subsequently larger scales. First, a small-scale pilot will be conducted at a feed flow rate of 1m³/hr before proceeding to a full-scale field pilot, treating FFT at 200m³/hr. Moreover, the water released from HFST will be used to extract bitumen from oil sand ore, with bitumen recovery performance compared against incumbent process water. The project will also evaluate HFST technology's ability to treat a fresh oil sands tailings stream or mine wastes outside of the oil sands industry.

从加拿大的油砂中提取沥青会产生大量的流体细尾矿（FFT），这是一种废料，对巩固和补救提出了重大的环境和经济挑战。截至2019年，为尾矿管理找到负责任的解决方案是加拿大采矿业的重中之重。化学公司BASF开发了一种新型技术，该技术将粗砂晶与FFT结合到由填充成功较大颗粒之间的间隙空隙组成的材料中。所得底物的分形性质（称为“高罚款沙尾矿”（HFST））与原始油砂矿相似。在BASF进行的产品开发测试并在NAIT上进行了独立验证，表明与HFST相比，使用HFST创建了完全集成的沙子/罚款矩阵，并且对剪切密集型过程条件的抵抗力比其他沙子基尾矿治疗策略（例如复合尾矿（CT））更具抵抗力。与CT不同的是，从处理材料中罚款的不可避免的分离是常见的，高释放水的清晰度是巴斯夫技术的标志。尽管已证明HFST可以在严格控制的实验室规模条件下提供最佳性能，但在现场条件下，还必须证明它可以表现出色。可以理解几种尾矿特性，例如固体含量，粘土馏分和水化学物质，会影响絮凝过程。但是，尾矿操作通常几乎没有流程控制，这意味着任何可行的治疗方法都必须具有稳健性并在各种条件下提供良好的性能。本研究的重点是确定HFST的操作窗口，然后在随后更大的尺度上应用学习。首先，在进行全尺度野外飞行员之前，将以1m³/hr的饲料流速进行小型飞行员，以200m³/hr处理FFT。此外，HFST释放的水将用于从油砂矿石中提取沥青，与现有工艺水相比，沥青恢复性能。该项目还将评估HFST技术治疗新鲜油砂尾矿流或油砂行业以外的废物的能力。