Poster Session

Characterization and mass balance of clay minerals around extraction

Heather Kaminsky, PhD student in Materials Engineering

Supervisor - Dr. Doug Ivey and Dr. Tom Etsell

Clay minerals play a very important role in oil sands processing, influencing settling behavior, water chemistry, and extraction efficiency. Consequently it is imperative that oil sands engineers understand clay mineralogy. Past research has focused on characterizing the clays in individual streams but no attempt has been made to track the clays from a single ore through the extraction process. This poster shows how the clay minerals are distributed to froth, middlings and tailings during the batch extraction process.