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Transition pathways, risks, and uncertainties
Published in Susanne Hanger-Kopp, Jenny Lieu, Alexandros Nikas, Narratives of Low-Carbon Transitions, 2019
Jenny Lieu, Susanne Hanger-Kopp, Wytze van der Gaast, Richard Taylor, Ed Dearnley
In Alberta, the development of the oil sands, even with reduced emissions, will continue to affect the environment. Locally, these impacts result from land-use changes in the oil sands extraction processes, which causes damage to ecosystems. Additionally, oil sand waste products pollute the air and local rivers. Land-use changes can also occur with the development of renewable energy, as seen in the UK renewable energy sector and Kenyan geothermal development. In the UK, stakeholders highlighted negative impacts on nature preservation with the expansion of renewable energy installations, rather than environmental concerns linked to nuclear accidents and waste. In Kenya, geothermal power facilities were the cause of unsustainable water abstraction from lakes and rivers, as well as disturbances to natural habitats and wildlife migratory routes.
Liquid Fuels from Oil Sands
Published in Prasenjit Mondal, Ajay K. Dalai, Sustainable Utilization of Natural Resources, 2017
Oil sands are the major source of unconventional oil, and Canada is the world’s largest commercial producer of crude oil from oil sands. Canada has 174 billion barrels of oil, of which 169 billion barrels are oil sands reserves. The total oil sands-derived oil production in 2014 reached about 2.3 mb/d (Upgraders and Refineries Facts and Stats2015). Oil sands are a mixture of sand, clay or other minerals, water, and bitumen. The bitumen is a dense and viscous hydrocarbon mixture from which crude oil is extracted. It is as viscous as cold molasses at room temperature. The National Energy Board of Canada defines bitumen as “a highly viscous mixture of hydrocarbons heavier than pentanes which, in its natural state, is not usually recoverable at a commercial rate through a well because it is too thick to flow.” The World Energy Council defines natural bitumen as “oil having a viscosity greater than 10,000 centipoise under reservoir conditions and an API gravity of less than 10° API.”
Oil
Published in Roy L. Nersesian, Energy Economics, 2016
After mining and transporting to an extraction plant, oil sand is crushed and mixed with hot water and then sent to a large separation vessel where sand falls to the bottom and bitumen, entrapped in tiny air bubbles, rises to the top as froth. The froth is then skimmed off, mixed with a solvent, and spun in a centrifuge to remove residual water and sand. Water and sand residue, called tailings, are placed in a settling pond where the remaining bitumen is skimmed off the surface. Sand mixed with fresh water is returned to the mine site by pipeline to fill in mined-out areas. Water residue from separating bitumen from oil sand is pumped to a settling pond for recycling. Recycling minimizes the undesirable consequences of releasing water to the environment, recovers over 90 percent of bitumen in sand, and reduces the amount of water needed to support oil sand operations.
A Multiple Objective Hybrid Algorithm for Daily Ore Blend in Oil Sands Mines
Published in International Journal of Mining, Reclamation and Environment, 2023
Vahid Nikbin, Ali Moradi Afrapoli
By producing 1.617 million barrels per day, oil sands mining is an important contributor to the Canadian economy. Ensuring consistent delivery of ore with acceptable quality to the oil sands crushers guarantees the planned quantity and quality of feed, ensuring consistent delivery of the oil to the market. Blending procedure is a complex problem in oil sands mining with significant consequences on downstream processes. However currently, this problem is solved manually without any guarantee on the production of an optimal or near optimal solution. In this article, a multiple objective hybrid algorithm is proposed aiming to minimise any deviations from tonnage, grade, fine and target values defined by long-term schedules. The proposed algorithm was successfully implemented on a real case study from a deposit located in the northeastern Alberta. The performance evaluation proves the robustness of the proposed algorithm.
Effective recovery of bitumen from Jordanian tar sand using several extraction methods
Published in International Journal of Coal Preparation and Utilization, 2023
Mohammad W. Amer, Eman M. Khdeir, Leen E. Haimour, Sereen I. Aljariri Alhesan, Francesco Barzagli, Khitam A. Alzughoul
Tar sands or oil sands are complex mixtures of sand, water, clay, other minerals, mainly quartz, and highly viscous organic matter called bitumen. The use and utilization of tar sand depend on its characteristics, chemical composition, origin, and the proportion of the organic matter (Ogunsola and Williams 1988; Zhi-Nong 2002). Tar sand has gained interest because of its heavy crude oil deposits. (API gravity: < 10°) (Speight 2019a). It is a major source of oil, in which the world’s reserves of original natural bitumen of origin are estimated at 1.7–2.5 trillion barrels of oil (Shun et al. 2017). It is estimated to be around 10.3 million barrels of oil in Jordan (Minerals, M. o. E. a. 2021). On the other hand, tar sand has several applications, including road construction, roofing, and paving roads. All these properties increase the interest to study and characterize this plentiful raw resource.
A stochastic mixed integer linear programming framework for oil sands mine planning and waste management in the presence of grade uncertainty
Published in CIM Journal, 2022
O. Mbadozie, E. Ben-Awuah, A. Maremi
The unsteady movement of oil sands ore during hydrotransport breaks the ore into individual particles that are needed for separation in the bitumen extraction process. Process aids, dispersing agents, and small air bubbles are then added before the ore reaches the extraction stage. The oil sands ore is then mixed with water in a processing tower to create an oil sands slurry, which is then pumped to a central extraction plant, where bitumen is extracted from the ore. After bitumen extraction, two main types of tailings are produced: (1) fine tailings and (2) coarse tailings. The fine tailings form the slurry, which needs to be contained in the tailings facility. The containment of fine tailings is carried out using a consolidated process, which takes into account the sands-to fines ratio present in the oil sands stream to increase the dewatering rate of the fine tailings and thereby enables faster reclamation and easier landscape maneuvering after deposition (Kaminsky, Etsell, Douglas, & Omotoso, 2008; Miller, Scott, & Sego, 2010; Slingerland, Beier, & Wilson, 2019; Sobkowicz, Boswell, Kofoed, & Gidley, 2013). Reclamation is facilitated by capping materials that are stored during the initial site clearing stage. Figure 1 presents a schematic view of the current oil sands mining materials handling layout showing the materials movement from the mine pit to the plant, waste dump, and external and in-pit tailings facilities.