Advanced Polymer Flocculants for Solid–Liquid Separation in Oil Sands Tailings

The generation of tailings as a by product of the bitumen extraction process is one of the largest environmental footprints of oil sands operations. Most of the tailings treatment technologies use polymer flocculants to induce solid–liquid separation. However, due to the complex composition of taili...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Macromolecular rapid communications. 2019-01, Vol.40 (1), p.e1800644-n/a
Main Authors: Gumfekar, Sarang P., Vajihinejad, Vahid, Soares, João B. P.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acrylamide
Chemical synthesis
dewatering
Environmental impact
Flocculants
Flocculation
Land reclamation
Mine tailings
Oil sands
oil sands tailings
Oils - chemistry
Optimization
Polymers
Polymers - chemical synthesis
Polymers - chemistry
Separation
Tailings
Wastewater
Wastewater treatment
water‐soluble polymers
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Summary:The generation of tailings as a by product of the bitumen extraction process is one of the largest environmental footprints of oil sands operations. Most of the tailings treatment technologies use polymer flocculants to induce solid–liquid separation. However, due to the complex composition of tailings, conventional flocculants cannot reach the same performance achieved in other wastewater treatments. Over the last couple of decades, the oil sands industry has used acrylamide‐based flocculants to treat tailings, achieving major progress in process optimization and integration with mechanical operations, but they still could not reach the required land reclamation targets. Over the last 5 years, the group designed, synthesized, and tested several novel polymer flocculants tailored for oil sands tailings treatment. This feature article communicates recent developments in these innovative polymers. The article first provides a background on tailings generation and treatment, followed by the description of advanced polymer flocculants categorized according to their microstructures such as linear, branched, and graft. The other tailings remediation technologies and one of the initial works on modeling of tailings flocculation is discussed. Solid–liquid separation in oil sands tailings is a multidimensional problem. Designing polymers with desired functionalities and controlled microstructures is one way to overcome this environmental problem. This article presents a brief overview of novel polymers useful to treat oil sands tailings.
ISSN:1022-1336
1521-3927
DOI:10.1002/marc.201800644