Osum Oil Sands Corp. will use water treatment technologies from Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies to process produced water from its Taiga Project at Cold Lake in Alberta, Canada.
Osum will produce bitumen utilizing the in-situ, steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) process beginning production in 2013. This produced water treatment system consists of AutoFlot induced gas flotation and power-clean oil removal filter technologies for the secondary de-oiling process.
HPD evaporators will then process the de-oiled produced water to provide high-quality water to the once-through steam generators as well as treat the resulting blow down.
The produced water treatment system is an example of the adoption of technologies and directives by Osum to minimize the impact of the Taiga Project on the surrounding environment. The evaporator system will recover more than 93% of the water from SAGD operations for re-use in the process.
More importantly, Osum will use no freshwater in the extraction process, instead using high salinity water for makeup demand for steam generation. The Silica Sorption Process used in the evaporator package was designed to tolerate the use of this brackish water as makeup that is unfit for consumption.
Flexible disposal of the evaporator concentrate from the Silica Sorption Process allows minimal treatment and safe handling of waste prior to disposal. Osum plans to use onsite disposal facilities for this concentrate in an effort to reduce truck traffic in the area.
Source: Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies
