Oilsands tailings mined for minerals
By CAROL CHRISTIAN
Today staff
Tuesday April 01, 2008
Mineral rich waste from oilsands mining may soon be the source used to produce a long list of manufactured products from ceramic tiles and paints to electronics and medical appliances.
This could all come about thanks to a pilot project initiated by Titanium Corporation, and funded, in part, through Alberta Energy’s Innovation Fund. The Alberta grant is valued at $3.5 million, an amount being matched by the Toronto-based company.
The company is to spend the next two years researching the value-added opportunities and environmental benefits of separating hydrocarbons and heavy minerals from oilsands tailings streams.
Rather than channeling mine froth tailings into disposal areas, the mineral-rich stream will be sent to a separation plant via pipeline where bitumen, titanium minerals, zircon and naphtha are to be recovered for commercial use.
The company acknowledged the Alberta grant is thanks to the province’s interest in new projects and technologies that have potential to add value to Alberta’s resources and improve the environment.
“It’s to capitalize on opportunity to expand our value added chain of energy products. It improves our ability to extract further resources which in turn, benefits all Albertans,” said Tim Markle, Alberta Energy spokesman, explaining the province’s goal from participation in this pilot project.
“I am very pleased that the government of Alberta has agreed to provide such significant support for this project,” said Scott Nelson, Titanium’s president and chief executive officer, in a statement. “Development of new technology that will reprocess an otherwise discounted waste product will add value to the bitumen resource and provide a number of environmental benefits such as reduced carbon dioxide emissions and smaller disposal areas.”
Its planned that two processing facilities will treat the recovered material: a primary concentrator plant will produce a heavy mineral concentrate which will then be separated in a mineral separation plant into final products such as ilmenite, leucoxene and zircon. Tailings and waste products remaining from the company’s mineral processing facilities will be returned to the existing tailings pond of the oilsands producer.
The final titanium products (ilmenite and leucoxene) will be sold to the titanium dioxide pigment industry, which manufactures products for the paint, coatings, paper, and plastics industries. The company’s zircon products will be sold to zircon consumers, millers and distributors. In addition, the company claims high quality ceramic tiles have been made from its zircon product.
There’s also environmental benefits to the process, noted Marklle this morning, as “it takes out a number of environmentally unfriendly gases.” The previously unrecovered bitumen contains naphtha, a gasoline additive, a substantial source of volatile organic carbons emissions. There is also potential for reduction of the intensity of carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions.
This isn’t the first interaction the two proponents have had. Titanium has been involved with two other pilot projects around the oilsands over recent years, and has been keeping the province apprised of its research and development work into the capturing of minerals from tailings.
“Last year, following an analysis of a pilot we did the year prior, late in ’06, we realized there was an opportunity to potentially recover some of this bitumen that was being lost in the tailings stream,” said Carolyn Muir, investor relations manager, explaining the reasoning behind this recent venture.
The company plans to spend this year focusing on research and development work around the bitumen recovery, she added. Up until last year, Titanium had been focused on recovering heavy minerals such as zircon and titanium, said Muir. After that, in 2009, the company aims to go into the field on an as yet undetermined site, to prove out the newly developed technology before moving ahead with commercial implementation.
It’s premature to speculate whether Alberta Energy would look to go ahead with more separation facilities based on the success of Titanium’s two year pilot program.
