Canada

There are currently two operators producing oil from the surface-mineable portions of Alberta’s oil sands (Syncrude Canada Ltd. and Suncor Inc.) and two other companies are proposing to enter the industry (Albian Sands in 2002 and True North in 2004).

Tailings from the two current oil sands plants contain approximately 220,000 tonnes per year of recoverable TiO2 and approximately 80,000 tonnes per year of recoverable zircon. This represents approximately 6% of the world’s TiO2 consumption and approximately 9% of the world’s zircon production. With the commissioning of plants by Albian Sands and True North, and the announced expansion of plants by Syncrude and Suncor, it is expected that these tonnages could quadruple in the next ten years. All of these operators have at least 50 years of reserves even at these expanded production rates.

The occurrence of heavy minerals in Alberta’s oil sands has long been known and is well documented in the literature. There have been a number of attempts to produce market-grade products from this resource and the results of this work have been quite mixed. Typically, researchers have used the normal mineral dressing techniques of the industry and have found the mineral assemblage does not respond to these techniques all that well. This has led to the widely held suspicion that there must be some difficult metallurgical problems associated with this resource. There are three main problem areas that have created difficulties for previous researchers: 1. The bitumen coating on the sand grains; 2. Secondary mineralization such as pyrite, siderite and calcite 3. A high proportion of aluminosilicates (approximately 25%) that have the same gravity, electrostatic and magnetic properties as other minerals in the heavy mineral suite. These problems can be largely overcome with some novel approaches. The bitumen can be removed by washing with a solvent in the presence of a demulsifier. The pyrite can be removed by flotation. And the titanium and zircon minerals can be separated by selective flotation followed by conventional electrostatic and magnetic separation.

The Athabasca oilsand deposits are located in Northern Alberta, Canada The oilsand deposits are Cretaceous age McMurray Formation and cover an area in Alberta of over 30 000 square kilometers. The McMurray Formation is an oil bearing quartz sand containing up to 18% by weight of extra heavy oil or bitumen. This is one of the largest hydrocarbon accumulations in the world, with an estimated 1800 * 109 barrels of contained oil or over four times the amount in Saudi Arabia. Of the oil contained in the Athabasca Formation, about 10% is recoverable