Agreed.
Evidence of meeting #20 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was technologies.
Evidence of meeting #20 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was technologies.
8:55 a.m.
Some hon. members
Agreed.
8:55 a.m.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Okay.
I have a quick question. Are consolidated tailings stackable tailings? Are they the same thing?
8:55 a.m.
Liberal
8:55 a.m.
Professor, University of Alberta, As an Individual
Stackable tailings, I think, are the dream for the mining side of the industry. It would mean you could immediately put tailings back into the mine and start reclaiming right away.
One of the unique characteristics of these mines is that because of the tailings, they have a very long delay between opening the mine and being able to begin reclamation. The consolidated tailings release a lot of water, and this requires a basin. With stackable tailings, you could immediately put solid material back into the mine site.
8:55 a.m.
Liberal
8:55 a.m.
Professor, University of Alberta, As an Individual
Without going through a pond at all.
8:55 a.m.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
I imagine you're familiar with Dr. Randy Mikula. Is that what he's working on, stackable tailings?
8:55 a.m.
Professor, University of Alberta, As an Individual
Yes. He's a world expert in dealing with tailings in any conceivable way.
8:55 a.m.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
You were saying that the water that is left over after the consolidation process is quite degraded and can't really be used for extraction. Are you saying it can't be used efficiently, that it still is being used for extraction, but they're not getting the best results, or are they just not using it, and if not, where is that water going?
8:55 a.m.
Associate Professor, Environmental Engineering Program, University of Alberta, As an Individual
The water is still going into the tailings ponds, but they are investigating technologies to treat that water to get a sufficiently good quality for extraction. So they have been using that, but they've noticed that the quality.... With the CT process--and I'm not sure how many years it's been in place--most of the tailings ponds still contain these mature, fine tails that haven't necessarily been touched by CT, and the water is still being used for recycling. They realize that they might need to do some water treatment with the water that's coming off the CT prior to extraction.
9 a.m.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
So right now when they're reclaiming a pond--I think Suncor is reclaiming a pond--what are they doing with the water that is so degraded they can't use it for extraction and they can't put it in the river?
I'm wondering if we're just moving the water around.
9 a.m.
Associate Professor, Environmental Engineering Program, University of Alberta, As an Individual
I think.... I'm not sure.
9 a.m.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
I know you're doing some interesting research, Dr. Guigard. Maybe you could tell us a bit about that.
The sense I'm getting from you is that these outside-the-box technologies are receiving little funding, maybe partially because from an oil company's perspective, if they funded your technologies and they worked, it would require even more funding for major pilot projects. And if the pilot projects worked, they'd have to rethink their whole infrastructure. Is that a block?
I put that question up against the idea that the industry is giving you $10 million, Dr. Gray, which is nothing to sneeze at, but when you consider the global investments, when we talk about the upcoming investments over the next whatever it is--10, 20 years--we're talking about $120 billion. The industry is giving you only $10 million. Again, it's nothing to sneeze at, but given the problems that we have, it seems like a drop in the bucket. I'm sure you appreciate it and your researchers appreciate it, and it's keeping research in Canada, but I'd like your take on that.
Then we'll go on to Mr. Braid.
9 a.m.
Associate Professor, Environmental Engineering Program, University of Alberta, As an Individual
The technology that I'm using is called supercritical fluid extraction, which has been used on a lab scale to extract bitumen from oil sands successfully.
Right now we're looking at carbon dioxide. It uses carbon dioxide at about 40 degrees and at relatively high pressure. It acts as a solvent that can extract the bitumen from the oil sands, and it can do that with little or no water.
Carbon dioxide is one example of a supercritical solvent, but there are many other compounds that could be used as supercritical solvents. You bring them up to pressure and temperature, you use them, you bring the pressure down, you recover your bitumen, and you recycle your solvent. So it's essentially almost a closed process in terms of the solvent. It needs little to no water.
Right now we're looking at water to develop a continuous process that would be able to handle large masses of ore, but that's what we need to prove on a pilot scale. Can we do this at a large enough scale?
One of the big challenges is looking at changing their infrastructure completely, changing the way things are done completely. It's also a technology that needs development, and it's going to take some time to develop.
The water extraction process is working. We're fine-tuning it, but it's working. How do we impose such a large change?
9 a.m.
Associate Professor, Environmental Engineering Program, University of Alberta, As an Individual
That's the big challenge.
9 a.m.
Professor, University of Alberta, As an Individual
I'll just follow up on a couple of comments by Dr. Guigard.
When you look at technology development, to come up with a transformative technology you expect to have to look at 10 to 20 different ideas that you pursue through university-type research. Then you decide which are the most promising ones to spend tens of millions of dollars on to fully develop and commercialize. So I think the important thing to ask the industry is what kind of list of opportunities they're looking at. Don't anticipate that each one of those ideas is necessarily a feasible answer that would be commercializable.
On the research side, we expect to have a lot of ideas in the hopper. Some of them work and some of them don't work in terms of coming up with new technology. You have to have as many failures as successes.
9 a.m.
Conservative
Peter Braid Conservative Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Vice-Chair.
I have four minutes. Is that correct? I want to make sure that I don't run out of time. Could you give me a 30-second warning?
9 a.m.
Liberal
9 a.m.
Conservative
Peter Braid Conservative Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Drs. Gray and Guigard, for being here this morning and for your testimony. I was very interested to learn more about the Centre for Oil Sands Innovation and the work you're doing as well, Dr. Guigard.
Dr. Gray, I wonder if I could start with you. Could you just briefly touch on the main areas or themes of innovation your institute is pursuing? I presume that one is carbon capture and storage. I've heard a little bit about waterless extraction as well. What are the key areas, as you see them?
9:05 a.m.
Professor, University of Alberta, As an Individual
There are three key themes we're working on. One is improved mining technology that allows mining without as much impact on the landscape. Another is waterless or near-waterless extraction to particularly minimize the tailings. The use of water is less of an issue, in my mind, than the accumulation of tailings and the contamination of water that comes out of the tailings. But a major theme for us is moving away from that technology completely. The third theme is new technology for upgrading the bitumen.
Ironically, we are not currently doing any work on carbon capture, and the reason for that is simple. We have not yet found a unique opportunity in the oil sands that links to carbon capture. Carbon capture is a huge issue for the industry, but it has it in common with the electric power industry, which burns coal in western Canada, and with other aspects of refining and processing hydrocarbon fuels. What we're trying to do at our centre is look for unique opportunities for research that can be transformative for the oil sands industry. We're still looking for that opportunity in the area of carbon capture that would be uniquely applicable to the oil sands.
9:05 a.m.
Conservative
Peter Braid Conservative Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
And are you collaborating with any universities, either in Canada or the U.S.?