Using water wisely: Better treatment methods for organics in water | Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance – COSIA
Can you picture a future where Canadian energy could be produced with no adverse impact on water? We hope so. As an innovator, your life’s work has been to find solutions to some of the most challenging issues. With COSIA you can take your ideas and turn them into real world solutions. Through commercialization, your innovation could also have significant market opportunities for other industries.
We are calling on innovators to submit new research or potential technologies to passively treat dissolved organic compounds present in oil sands process water (OSPW). As an industry, we are seeking to improve existing or new non-mechanical technologies for better environmental performance.
Water is one of our most valuable resources for nurturing and sustaining life. It’s for this reason our Water Environment Priority Area is focusing on innovative and sustainable solutions to reduce water use and increase water recycling rates at oil sands mining and in situ operations.
To extract bitumen in surface mining operations, process water is heated and mixed with oil sands to separate the bitumen from the mineral solids. The bitumen is floated and the tailings (mixture of water, sand, silt, clay, and some unrecovered bitumen) are deposited in tailings ponds. The overall process is approximately 80-85 percent efficient and the cap layer or free water zone at the top of the ponds is reused in the extraction process.
The water that is used in the extraction process and comes into direct contact with the ore is called OSPW.
Trace amounts of bitumen are soluble in water, so the OSPW contains from 20-60 ppm of dissolved organics. These are beneficial to the extraction process, so there is no need to treat them when the OSPW is being recycled.
When the OSPW is ready to be returned to Athabasca watershed, it needs to be safely treated to remove the dissolved organics which are harmful to aquatic life.
About This Innovation Opportunity
For this Innovation Opportunity, you will play a critical role in finding important solutions to advance the treatment and recycling of water resources, while developing a commercial asset that could have additional market opportunities.
There are two main technology types available to treat organics in OSPW:
• Active treatments – requires energy inputs, maintenance and operators
• Passive treatments – requires none of those things.
This innovation opportunity is focused on passive, or low energy treatment of the organic components present in OSPW.
There are important parameters for the successful technology. It must be able to:
• Work in a Northern Climate.
• Be a passive system and not require operator or maintenance interaction.
• Treat up to five million cubes of OSPW per year.
• Produce a treated effluent at a specified quality (see link for more information).
• Remove sufficient dissolved organics such that it passes the acute bioassays.
Generally, the proposed technologies will be of two types:
1) “Once through treatment,” in which the treated water meets the discharge requirements following treatment.
2) “In Pond Treatment” in which the treatment technology occurs in/or adjacent to the pond, and gradually improves the water quality until the quality of the entire water body is sufficient that the water can be safely returned to the Athabasca River.
Typically, these lakes consist of a layer of OSPW overlying a FFT deposit. Surface water will be supplied by the surrounding watershed and, over time, the outflow will report safely to the environment. Research efforts to date demonstrate that these lakes will evolve into natural ecosystems and over time support healthy communities of aquatic plant, animals and fish.
Submit an idea for consideration
Your knowledge could help us improve the environmental performance of the energy Canadians rely on everyday. If your idea could be applied to this innovation opportunity, please follow the below process:
• Review the challenge document and the related links below for more information.
• Evaluate your research idea or technology to see if it could be applied as a passive organic treatment solution.
• Submit your idea for consideration through COSIA’s Environmental Priority Assessment Portal (E-TAP). This step requires filling out a simple form to provide us with basic, non-confidential information.
Submissions will be viewed by all COSIA members. If even just one COSIA member is interested in the idea, commercial discussions will begin.
What’s in it for a potential solution provider?
As an academic, researcher, innovator, inventor, entrepreneur, large company, or have other technical expertise, we can help turn your idea into a real-world solution.
There are many benefits to working with COSIA, which can include developing or testing new technologies. The oil sands are one of Canada’s largest industries. There are significant market opportunities for any technologies that get commercialized for use by one or more COSIA members. Many technologies advanced through COSIA can also find markets in other industries.
Our Approach
COSIA is an alliance of oil sands producers focused on accelerating the pace of improvement in environmental performance in Canada’s oil sands through collaborative action and innovation.
In effort to improve environmental performance, COSIA members review their operations to identify innovation opportunities that, if realized, would contribute towards achievement of COSIA’s aspirations.
If your idea or research area isn’t a fit for this project, check out our full list of Innovation Opportunities. Our work includes research and technology opportunities, from incremental – because the small things add up – through to game-changers with the potential to propel industry forward.