| Abstract | The hot water process used by Suncor and Syncrude to extract bitumen from the Athabasca oil sands produces tailings with about 35 % more volume than that occupied by the bituminous sands before mining. This increase is largely the result of water hold-up in the fines fraction from the tailings, arising primarily from the ‘middlings’ treatment circuit. Our recent work suggests that approximately 50% of these fines consist of amorphous clays. In this investigation we have developed fractionation methodology to separate amorphous solids from Syncrude fine tailings. This fraction has been characterized by elemental analysis, X-ray diffraction, XPS, SEM, infrared spectroscopy, and surface area measurement. |
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