Imagine walking on a tailings pond that has been restored to grass and trees. Thanks to BASF and its innovative technology, people in Canada are able to do just that. The Canadian Patent Office has just granted a patent to BASF for its RHEOMAX® technology for use in tailings management. This innovative technology allows the mining industry to efficiently and rapidly help restore land previously used for mining to its natural state.
“BASF is committed to developing solutions to global challenges – in this case, restoring beautiful and diverse Canadian land to its natural state. This milestone demonstrates BASF’s commitment to Canada from a business and environmental standpoint. We are very pleased that we can bring this important technology to Canada to enable the country to continue taking advantage of the business opportunities that the oil sands offer, while meeting environmental standards,” said Laurent Tainturier, President, BASF Canada.
The RHEOMAX technology offers solutions to an industry that continues to be challenged by issues relating to the use of water and the impact of exploration, extraction and disposal activities on the environment. These include minimizing water consumption, maximizing recovery of process water, reducing land area consumed by tailings and minimizing the costs and time required to rehabilitate such land. RHEOMAX is suitable for use in mineral and metal processing, including oil sands processing.
“We are very pleased that we have been granted this patent so that we can put this technology to use here in Canada as it has been used in several other locations including in Australia, Europe and South America,” said Chalmers Reed, Sales Manager, Mining Chemicals North America. “This allows the Canadian mining industry to meet the environmental challenge of reclaiming the land while still meeting global consumer demands for energy.”
When oil sands are extracted through open-pit mining, companies use a very water intensive process to separate heavy oil (bitumen) from the sand composite. The waste material resulting from this process is called “tailings”. It is a mixture of water, fine clay, sand and residual bitumen that is deposited into tailings ponds. These tailings ponds are very large and negatively impact the landscape and environment. Returning a tailings pond to a landscape of vegetation and trees can take several decades, because the fine silts in the ponds settle to the bottom very slowly or can remain in suspension practically forever.
With RHEOMAX, BASF’s patented technology for tailings management, the dewatering, recovery and recycling of tailings ponds has been greatly accelerated so that fewer and smaller tailings ponds are needed, with the ultimate goal that the need for tailings ponds can be completely eliminated. The process binds all the solid particles, fine and coarse, together in a homogeneous particulate structure that quickly and effectively releases the trapped water from the tailings. This recovered water is clean enough to be recycled back into the process while the solids are left to dry, compact and can begin supporting growth of vegetation in a matter of weeks.
So what once took decades, can now take just weeks or months allowing the tailings ponds to be drained and the land to be reclaimed so that it can be quickly returned to its natural state.
About BASF’s Performance Chemicals Division
As an innovative partner, BASF’s Performance Chemicals division offers specific solutions for defined customer industries including plastics, automotive, refineries, oilfield and mining, water treatment as well as leather and textiles. The Division’s Mining Chemicals business offers an extensive range of mineral processing reagents. BASF is a global business and currently the strengths are in solid/ liquid separation and solvent extraction; however we also offer reagents for flotation, dispersing, agglomerating and others. Our products are marketed worldwide. Further information can be found at www.basf.com/miningchemicals.