Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

The Alberta Oil Sands, Canada's great energy resource, holds great economic benefit for the country. However the production of synthetic crude oil from bitumen requires vast amounts of water even when water is recycled. Recycling reduces the amount of water used but it concentrates the toxins and metals in these ""tailings"" waters. Therefore extensive remediation of thee tailings water is required in order to safely return the water and solid waste back to the natural environment. It has taken more than 20 years for the first successful reclamation of a tailings pond. Continuing with the current process or even the thickening the tailings water without increasing the rate of remediation will result in ever increasing volumes of toxic waste, which again raises concerns about the risks to the environment. Bacteria grown as communities, called biofilms, are able to work as consortiums to degrade highly toxic compounds that organisms as individuals cannot. Drs. Ceri and Turner of The Biofilm Research Group (BRG) of the University of Calgary have developed technologies that allow for the selection of microbial communities highly tolerant to the stress associated with toxins, metals and antimicrobials. These technologies will be used to isolate biofilms of bacteria indigenous to the tar sands environment that are able to, albeit slowly, detoxify the tailings ponds. These biofilms will be further optimized for their ability to detoxify the tailings. Drs. Yu and Liu of The Environmental Engineering Group at the University of Alberta are specialists in wastewater biofilm reactors, for sewage remediation. They will design reactors using biofilms to achieve tailings remediation. Therefore, the objective of this proposal is to combine the expertise of these two groups to: 1. select appropriate bacterial populations that are optimized for the rapid and effective breakdown and removal of toxic tailings components and 2. Design a bioreactor that utilize these populations to achieve rapid, complete and cost effective process for the detoxification of tailings waters derived from bitumen extraction and processing.