The tailings ponds created by Alberta's oilsands mining have tripled in size since 2005 and are predicted to grow another 40 percent. Video by Ryan Jackson, edmontonjournal.com
great informative video guys! didn't even know about pit lakes, what the hell are they thinking?! you should go to the tailing pond spill in Likely and see whats being done about it.
Can you provide any references to the litterature you used to make this video?, especially I would love if you could share a link or search phrase to find documentation on in-pit lakes
I worked up in the oil sands as an engineer for a long time. Yeah, 1600 birds die a year due to tailings ponds. Nobody cares about the tens of thousands that die from wind farms (made from mining with tailings ponds) or the many more that die just being in human cities. Such hypocrisy.
Every mining process in the world pretty much has tailings ponds. This is basically the results of sediments. the dense stuff (sand and clay in this case) sinks to the battom and the lighter stuff (water and oil) floats to the top. It's extra concentrated because of the water recycled in the process. Not every drop of oil gets extracted in the process. It's disappointing that this has to come from Edmonton of all places.
There is a video which illustrates the power of Diamonox® Technology for the treatment of water typically found in tailings ponds used for the extraction of heavy oil. Open mining and SAGD operations utilize tailings ponds as a necessary method for recycling water. However the dewatering process can be considerably long (5 to even 20 years) because naphthenic acids render the clay (fines in the order of 2-3um) oil wet, trapping the water and preventing evaporation. Consequently, due to the large amount of water used, tailings ponds tend to be substantially large. Diamonox Technology can process this water in a mater of minutes. The Diamonox® AOP process destroys the naphthenic acids that are bound to the clay, which becomes water wet. The emulsifying properties of the naphthenic acids is greatly diminished. As the clay settles at the bottom, the toluene also clarifies as less oil-wet clay is present. At the end of the process, about 10-12 minutes, the toluene is clear and recoverable, while the great majority of the clay settles at the bottom. Diamonox Technology can have great benefits for the treatment of tailings ponds water: 1) clay settles faster to the bottom enhancing the dewatering process. This will result in smaller tailing ponds with much shorted residence time. 2) the bitumen/toluene can be recovered. About 3% of the tailings waters contain residual bitumen trapped in the clay. Diamonox can enable the recovery of the bitumen. 3) Naphthenic acids are destroyed significantly reducing the toxicity level of the remaining water. The water shown in the video is a synthetic mixture trying to simulate the actual conditions of the tailings ponds. It contains brine and toluene in a 1:1 ratio, 1wt% kaolinite, and 100 ppm sodium naphthenate. The color chance of the water is partly due the oxidation of Si and Al contained in the kaolinite.
In December 2016, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed allowing wind-turbine electric generation companies to kill golden eagles without penalty, so long as "companies take steps to minimize the losses". If issued, the permits would last 30 years, six times the current 5-year permits.[108]
What's the point in ruining Alberta's profit with clean up? Just let the tailing pond be or don't mine the oil in the first place. Dont shoot someone then waste resource trying to save him after? That is just dumb.
