Andrew J. Vreugdenhil

1. Introduction Click to copy section linkSection link copied! In Canada, the oil sands resources rank as the world’s third-largest crude oil reserves, totaling 170 billion barrels within the province of Alberta. Oil sands basically consist of 6–16% bitumen, 1–8% water, and 80–87% sand, silt, and clay.

Abstract Canadian oil sands are the third largest oil reserves in the world, containing an estimated 28.3 billion m3 of recoverable bitumen. Extraction of bitumen via surface mining and water-based extraction leads to the formation of tailings ponds, which contain slow settling mature fine tailings (MFT). These MFT can take hundreds of years to settle on their own. Polymer flocculants are used to improve the settling rate of the MFT.