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.
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
You need money from the federal government and from the industry.
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Why wouldn't the industry cover it 100%? This sounds wonderful.
4:30 p.m.
President, Gradek Energy Inc.
They made billions of dollars last year and they're cutting their budget this year.
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
What does this do to the research that you and NRCan are doing on--you mention it here--developing new technologies to maximize water recovery from tailings? Does it say to you, we've got the magic bullet now, let's stop these other projects, or is it complementary to what you're doing?
4:30 p.m.
Director General, Department of Natural Resources, CANMET Energy Technology Centre (CETC) - Devon
I can answer that.
As part of our activities we actually look at different technologies, and we look at it for small companies like Mr. Gradek's. We also look at it for maybe larger companies that are interested in certain technologies. So we actually evaluate a lot of these technologies. The issue is not as simple as we think it is. There are many factors that come in.
If I talk about recovering bitumen or oil from the tailings ponds or others using hydrophobic surfaces, or oliophilic surfaces, there are about three or four similar ones started in the eighties by somebody called Kryer. It's the Kryer process and Kryer used to work at ARC. He developed this sieve through which you pass the oil...and it goes out.
4:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
So there are similar competing technologies in the same vein.
4:35 p.m.
Director General, Department of Natural Resources, CANMET Energy Technology Centre (CETC) - Devon
They have similar principles, but the application is different.
There is another company called Minminer that's almost at the same stage as Mr. Gradek and is working currently with Suncor. They are all trying very hard to convince the industry that these things work.
We looked at this and we looked at many others. For example, we have one or two technologies--I cannot mention the name of the company--but it is to put all the oil sands in and apply heat to it and recover the light ends. So it recovers close to a very light oil that can be used in refineries and so on. We have two technologies that we are evaluating now with the Alberta government in our pilot plant. This is another way of looking at technologies.
4:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Will there be room for all of these technologies on the market or will one win out?
4:35 p.m.
Director General, Department of Natural Resources, CANMET Energy Technology Centre (CETC) - Devon
I think maybe one of them will move much faster than the others, depending on the acceptance of the oil industry.
Talking about government money to support these things is a good push, but ultimately, no matter how much you spend on supporting the technology, if the industry is not accepting that technology, it is not going to go anywhere.
4:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Okay. That's it for my questions.
Mr. Calkins, do you have a question?
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
Sure, certainly. Thank you, Mr. Chair. It was certainly an honour to fill in for you for a few minutes and I appreciate your confidence in me.
I just have a couple of questions to ask Dr. Hamza and Dr. Kasperski.
My understanding of the oil sands is.... When you take a look at conventional oil, it's down there thousands of feet below the surface in the geological formations. It's in an anaerobic environment.
When you take a look at the oil sands, the formations of Alberta, it's presumed that the oil has gone through the geologic formations and has come out in the oil sands deposits right now, and the bitumen is different because it has been exposed to an aerobic process.
Do I have that understanding right? That is why the bitumen is thick. It is not as clean as, let's say, a sweet crude. Do I understand the basics of that?
4:35 p.m.
Manager, Water Management, Department of Natural Resources
Yes. It is not my area of expertise, but that's what I have understood. The geologists say that it has undergone degradation by bacteria over geological time, broken off the light ends, and you're left with the heavy big molecules and the heavy oil.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
My understanding is that there was a component there of exposure to some level of oxygen as well. Has it been a completely anaerobic process or is there an aerobic process in there?
4:35 p.m.
Manager, Water Management, Department of Natural Resources
I don't know, sorry.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
Where I'm going with this is that we have a number of contaminated sites across Canada. One of them is the Sydney Tar Ponds, where crude oil has been exposed in the tar pond for periods of time. We have those kinds of contaminated sites around the country, where we have conventional oil exploration and we've had spills. I'm wondering if the same process could be applied where we could heat up, say, the sludge mixture of the contaminated soil. We could basically melt off the oil that's there, and that would be a kind of environmental cleaning process. That could be followed up by the technology that Mr. Gradek is proposing through his process. Is that something that could be used?
If you look at it from a technical perspective, the oil companies are simply cleaning the oil out of the sand and putting the sand back into the tailings pond and it's settling out. My understanding of the technology that Mr. Gradek is proposing is that it will actually get rid of the remaining bits of bitumen or oil in the process that are interfering with the ability of the settling in the tailings ponds. From your perspective, are there applications of this technology that we're not even looking at in this particular point of time?
4:35 p.m.
Director General, Department of Natural Resources, CANMET Energy Technology Centre (CETC) - Devon
In principle, what you need to do is remove the oil from the sand, or from the soil that it's attached to, with any process that will dislodge the oil from the sand. The way they used to do it in the oil sands, in the early days, was like a washing machine. You put all of the oil in a drum with some detergent, you tumble it around, and it detaches from the sand. This can be applied.
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
I think Mr. Warawa hinted at this and you've alluded to it as well. When it comes to cleanup capabilities, I think that's where the original idea for this technology came from in dealing with oil spills. We had an incident in Alberta a number of years ago where we had a railcar dump a bunch of oil into Wabamun Lake. We've seen some incidents where we have discharges, whether accidental or on purpose, along our coastlines. We've seen what has happened to wildlife.
Would it be fair to say that we could literally take a bunch of these beads, throw them on the surface of the tailings pond, they'd collect all of the bitumen that's floating on top of the tailings ponds, and it would simply be a matter of collecting them off the top of the tailings pond?
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
Have you done any studies with this technology? We talk about the strength of the bond between the bitumen and the bead. Would it be fair to say that it takes a lot of energy to break that bond, which is why you have the wash with the naphtha in your enclosed facility?
And would it be fair to say that if a bead with bitumen on it was floating on a tailings pond and came in contact with waterfowl or some other species of wildlife, that the contact with the wildlife would break the bond of the bitumen to the bead?
4:40 p.m.
President, Gradek Energy Inc.
As long as there's water, no. If it's floating on water, no.
4:40 p.m.
President, Gradek Energy Inc.
Yes. For reference, Mr. Calkins, when you ask about oil spills, we've done tests with our technology on beach sand from the coast of Normandy after the Prestige spill. It was weathered crude, the viscosity was 10,000 centipoise. In 60 seconds, all of the oil was removed. It brought it down to a level which was non-detectable. You put the sand in a zip-lock bag, and three months later when you open the zip-lock bag, you smell sea salt and not oil.