Instead of being a nuisance, tailing ponds’ waste water is now being seen as a resource.Todd Korol
Repurposing waste water is key to solving the industry's big environmental challenge
Developing the energy riches of the oil sands and the shale gas deposits of northern Alberta and British Columbia will require a lot more water than is easily or sustainably available.
To offset this challenge, the oil sands companies have initiated some innovative engineering and collaborative solutions to reduce the use of fresh water, clean and reuse that water afterwards and develop new technologies to reduce water consumption.
The thirst is unquenchable: The oil sands' fresh water use in 2012 was about 187 billion litres, according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) – that's about 40 per cent of the City of Toronto's annual water consumption.
While Canada is the envy of the world with its abundant lakes and rivers, that water isn't evenly distributed. In northern B.C., for example, the Peace River area around Dawson Creek depends on rainfall to top up the aquifer and during a drought in 2012 the city was faced with a desperate choice: cut off water sales to the oil and gas industry or cut off residents.
They chose to cut off the 25 to 30 per cent of city water going to feed the oil and gas industry. Only one company dodged the bullet: Shell Canada. By happy coincidence Shell had the foresight a few years earlier to collaborate with Dawson City to build a new sewage treatment plant, putting up $11-million while the city contributed $1.5-million.
For both parties it was a win. The plant opened in 2012, treating 3 million litres of water daily, the majority of which Shell pumped to its Groundbirch shale gas project through a 48-km pipeline it also constructed. Dawson City was able to use the surplus for its parks and playing fields – until then a luxury − and sell some to industry.
The reclaimed water is also stored and treated at Groundbirch, further reducing usage. That success has prompted Shell to sign deals with two more Albertan municipalities, Edson and Fox Creek, to develop and use water from their sewage treatment facilities.
Over in the oil sands, critics like environmental think tank the Pembina Institute claim it takes 2.4 barrels of fresh water to generate a barrel of bitumen. Better managing water consumption has become something of an obsession for oil sands development companies. A group of 13 of these companies, under Canada's Oil Sands Innovation Alliance (COSIA), has made water one of four main focus areas where the industry will collaborate and share best practices to reduce consumption.
Some solutions seem simple. Suncor Energy, for example, was constantly spraying water on the dirt roads leading to its MacKay River project in summer only to see it evaporate in minutes.
It turned to GE Water and Process Technologies, which suggested DusTreat, a product made from pulp and paper byproducts for the mining industry and introduced about five years ago. It's a biodegradable, organic binder added to water and then sprayed on unpaved roads.
The product adheres to dust particles and traps them, resulting in a 75-per-cent reduction of dust and an 85-per-cent reduction in water usage and reduced CO2 emissions by 200 tonnes annually.
Due to its success, other mining operations around the world subsequently enquired and started using the product.
In addition to the project with GE, Suncor is working on numerous technologies and process improvements within its water management strategy and is set to surpass its environmental performance goal for reducing oil sands water consumption by 12 per cent before 2015 (compared to a 2007 baseline).
Suncor has recently opened a wastewater treatment plant so that water can be treated and reused in operations or returned to the environment. An industry first, it is expected to nearly eliminate wastewater flow from Suncor's upgraders to its tailings ponds, says Prit Kotecha, director of environmental excellence and climate strategy.
Speaking about a separate initiative that sends 1.5 million litres of tailings water per day from an oil sands mine to an in-situ oil sands facility for re-use in steam generation, Kotecha said it was important to change the perception of waste and instead see it as a resource.
Until a few years ago, tailings ponds were just a necessary nuisance; today they're a resource. It's a critical change in thinking because demand for water is so high. Using tailings water to feed boilers means an improved way of creating steam – which, in an in-situ development, is injected into the ground at high temperature to separate the bitumen from the sand.
While there are designs for more efficient boilers and steam injection systems in the works, for the most part the technology in play today is off the shelf and it's proving effective. The big change, said Kotecha, is the mindset.
"Initially it was about a perception change," he said. "Now the ideas just keep coming."
Not all of the oil sands projects can incorporate these water conservation techniques, since they're all at different stages of development and some just don't have reserves in their tailings ponds yet.
"Over time, though, we will see overall reductions. Not everyone can achieve 75 per cent tomorrow," he said. "We were lucky in a way because we had these tailing ponds for a while and we'd been storing the water but other projects aren't at that stage yet."
For more innovation insights, visit www.gereports.ca
This content was produced by The Globe and Mail's advertising department, in consultation with GE. The Globe's editorial department was not involved in its creation.