Reducing Tailings Emissions with Floating Sunlight-Driven Technologies
Funded through ERA’s Shovel Ready Challenge, this project aimed to demonstrate H2nanO’s SolarPass Floating Reactive Barrier (FRB) technology, which passively reduces fugitive emissions from water. While ultimately terminated, the project validated the SolarPass FRB concept and helped advance other H2nanO projects within and outside of the oil sands mining context.
The SolarPass FRB is a first-of-kind in-situ treatment technology that intercepts, contains and transforms volatile compounds before they leave the water. It combines a passive advanced oxidation process that destroys hard-to-degrade compounds, and a floating reactive barrier used to capture and treat volatile emissions from stored water to mitigate emissions and odour. The technology naturally floats at the water surface and includes a supporting system that maintains even coverage of the water surface, while keeping foulants such as bitumen out of the treatment area. The technology is powered by natural sunlight without additional chemical or energy input and reduces GHG emissions by up to 80 times from ponds or lagoons.
Scaling and Improving the SolarPass FRB
During the project, H2nanO completed the engineering design and operations planning required for deployment and successfully completed an off-site scale-up test of the system in a model lagoon environment. This included direct testing of multiple sizes and shapes of the “support” component of the system to find the best wind resistance. Based on observations early in the project and further testing of the gas trapping and treatment mechanism, the team identified an improved formulation of the material and aimed to implement it later in the project. These improvements aimed to improve long-term performance of the material, increase wind and foulant resiliency to maintain the surface coverage and potentially accelerate final collection processes, all while reducing the manufacturing complexity and costs. While the funding relationship was terminated before H2nanO constructed a full-scale pilot, the testing provided critical evaluation of the technology at a representative scale, scaling insights into the materials and potential for improvements. These advancements showed promise to further improve the economics and business case for cost-offsetting with GHG emissions reduction and long-term performance.
What’s next?
Since the funding relationship was terminated in 2023, H2nanO continued to monitor opportunities for their technology in oil sands tailings ponds. While there were still de-risking activities left in this project, H2nanO made valuable progress in scaling and testing the SolarPass FRB.