RE:RE:Future Carbon ReductionFor existing facilities, the TIC technology would be installed as a tailpipe solution, intercepting the tailings before they go to the tailings pond and treating them to remove valuable products and clean up the effluent stream https://titaniumcorporation.com/projects/full-scale-commercial-prototype-facility/ shows where the TIC CVW plant is installed within the process.
The makeup of the tailings stream is something like:
- 80% water
- 17% heavy minerals and sand
- 2% bitumen
- 1% diluent (e.g., solvents)
So a significant amount of solvents and bitumen go to the tailings and are released to the environment in the form of greenhouse gases and volatile organic compounds.
The CVW process does the following:
- Recovers additional bitumen that would have normally gone to the talkings pond.
- Recovers solvents in the tailings
- Removes minierals from the tailings sands and sends them to a separation plant. This would be things like Titanium dioxide and Zircon.
- Thickens the tailings so that they are ready to reclaim and don't need to be sent to a tailings pond.
- Cleans up the water from the tailings stream.
This was demonstrated in a trial plant, and later at commercial scale. There's a presentation on the commercial demonstration here: https://titaniumcorporation.com/site/assets/files/5670/apega-luncheon-presentation-dec-12-2019.pdf
There's lots of other info on the company website.