Remediating Oil Sands Froth Treatment Tailings
Approved for funding in ERA’s Methane Challenge in 2017, Titanium Corporation conducted a Front-End Engineering Design (FEED) study to explore commercial implementation of their Creating Value from Waste (CVW) technology at Canadian Natural’s Horizon oilsands site. By its completion in 2019, the project completed the FEED, the technical design, and developed a total installed cost estimate.
Froth treatment tails are estimated to be responsible for more than 90 per cent of methane emissions from tailings ponds. Titanium developed a first-of-kind sustainable technology to remediate oil sands froth treatment tailings while creating value through mineral products extraction. The CVW process eliminates certain tailings streams while recovering bitumen, solvent, and high-value minerals. By preventing bitumen and solvent release, the solution thereby avoids fugitive methane emissions, improves tailings remediation, and improves water quality.
The project evaluated the CVW process for commercial scale implementation at Canadian Natural’s Horizon site in Northern Alberta. The project set out to generate a capital cost estimate for implementation and assess the net impact of the CVW Horizon project on GHG emissions.
Successful FEED Completion for CVW Technology Implementation
The project completed facility location studies, utility tie points identification, and FEED contractor selection. It completed two studies to provide process definition – i) to examine the settling behaviour of tailings processed through the CVW process, and ii) to model the performance of the CVW naphtha recovery units with a view towards scalability.
Project partners developed the design for the Concentrator Plant, responsible for hydrocarbon recovery and minerals stream conditioning, and the Mineral Separation Plant, which produces valuable mineral products including zircon and titanium-bearing minerals. During the project, bitumen recovery was confirmed in the Concentrator Plant heat and material balance. Additionally, project design criteria targets were exceeded for solvent recovery, heavy minerals recovery, steam loading, and concentrator reliability.
The main conclusions of the FEED study included an optimized integration design for implementation at the Horizon site, considering key tie-ins and utility requirements, including: i) implementation of CVW at Horizon can result in a net reduction and avoidance of 584,000 tCO2e/year by 2050; ii) an optimized thickener was designed to transition CVW tailings into Horizon tailings management planning; and iii) an optimized Class 3 capital cost estimate was developed.
What’s next?
Further advancement of the technology involves executing a commercial prototype deployment, such as what was proposed in the FEED study. After the success of the FEED, Canadian Natural and Titanium initially moved toward the commercialization phase of CVW at the Horizon site with an additional $5 million awarded from ERA to a $610 million project. Next steps entailed economic modelling, defining and approving a business model, application to the Alberta Energy Regulator, securing financing, and drafting detailed engineering. Additionally, the project would have included the first commercial installation of CVW technology, and factored in reaching FID for the full project, which is no longer in operation. In 2022 Titanium Corporation rebranded to CVW CleanTech. The CVW technology is commercially ready to deploy and CVW CleanTech is seeking to partner with leading oil sands mining companies. Since inception, CVW Clean Tech has received over $80M in grants from government agencies, and has invested $100M to further develop the CVW technologies. They have also conducted several successful pilots and test programs. The technology has been advanced to consider the use of a centralized Mineral Separation Plant to accept feed from multiple oil sands mining sites. CVW CleanTech remains committed to helping oilsands industry minimize its environmental footprint by reducing methane and CO2 emissions, and enabling recovery of high value minerals, along with bitumen, solvent, and water through CVW technology.