Subventions et des contributions :

Subvention ou bourse octroyée s'appliquant à plus d'un exercice financier (2017-2018 à 2018-2019).

Heavy oil production of steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) is the largest in-situ production process in thex000D
Canadian oil-sands. This production process generates large quantities of produced water, typically 3 to 4 timesx000D
the volume of oil, which must be treated and recycled to ensure that the process is viable and to meet regulatoryx000D
requirements. The produced water must be treated before being fed to the steam generator (boiler) for injectionx000D
into the reservoir as steam. To avoid fouling of the boilers, the water is usually treated by a process of warm orx000D
hot lime softening to remove hardness and silica which can scale the boilers. This process is high cost andx000D
generates significant volumes of sludge. An alternative process, so-called zero lime softening is beingx000D
developed by the industry partner, Eco-Tech, which is lower cost and more environmentally freindly.x000D
Eco-Tech have shown that if the produced water is treated to remove hardness, the silica can be at a relativelyx000D
high concentration (>200 mg/L), without causing significant scaling of the boilers. However, the concentratex000D
stream from the boilers contains greater than 1200 mg/L silica, and must be treated prior to recycle or disposal.x000D
Conventional chemical processes (acidification) lead to a silica gel sludge which is difficult o separate from thex000D
water. Electrocoagulation (EC), has been identified as a potential treatment process for the blowdownx000D
concentrate. In previous work, we have been found that EC can effectively remove silica from SAGD producedx000D
water. This project will investigate EC for the treatment of blowdown concentrate generated by the zero-limex000D
softening process. The treatment performance and filterability of the sludge will be investigated as a function ofx000D
the operating conditions and design of the EC system.