Petroleum coke adsorption as a water management option for oil sands process-affected water

    Zubot, Warren and MacKinnon, Michael D. and Chelme-Ayala, Pamela and Smith, Daniel W. and Gamal El-Din, Mohamed (2012) Petroleum coke adsorption as a water management option for oil sands process-affected water. Science of The Total Environment, 427-42. pp. 364-372. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2012.04.024

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    Official URL: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2012.04.024

    Abstract

    Water is integral to both operational and environmental aspects of the oil sands industry. A water treatment option based on the use of petroleum coke (PC), a by-product of bitumen upgrading, was examined as an opportunity to reduce site oil sands process-affected water (OSPW) inventories and net raw water demand. Changes in OSPW quality when treated with PC included increments in pH levels and concentrations of vanadium, molybdenum, and sulphate. Constituents that decreased in concentration after PC adsorption included total acid-extractable organics (TAO), bicarbonate, calcium, barium, magnesium, and strontium. Changes in naphthenic acids (NAs) speciation were observed after PC adsorption. A battery of bioassays was used to measure the OSPW toxicity. The results indicated that untreated OSPW was toxic towards Vibrio fischeri and rainbow trout. However, OSPW treated with PC at appropriate dosages was not acutely toxic towards these test organisms. Removal of TAO was found to be an adsorption process, fitting the Langmuir and Langmuir–Freundlich isotherm models. For TAO concentrations of 60 mg/L, adsorption capacities ranged between 0.1 and 0.46 mg/g. This study demonstrates that freshly produced PC from fluid cokers provides an effective treatment of OSPW in terms of key constituents' removal and toxicity reduction.

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    Item Type: Article
    Uncontrolled Keywords: Petroleum coke; Oil sands process-affected water; Adsorption; Total acid-extractable organics; Naphthenic acids; Toxicity
    Subjects: Methodology > Other-additional study
    Region > Canada > Alberta
    Inducing technology > Unconventional hydrocarbon extraction
    Inducing technology > Other inducing technology types
    Project: SHEER project