Srboljub Masala is a Senior Geotechnical Engineer with Thurber Engineering Ltd.
He describes pilot scale tests at Shell Canada's Tailings Testing Facility at their Muskeg River oil sands mine in NE Alberta. The tests looked at deposition, dewatering and the development of strength in paste and thickened tailings. Of particular interest is the variation of consolidation parameters with scaling up from laboratory to the field and the dewatering and strength development with natural freeze/thaw processes.
While thickened paste tailings is not a technology that oil sands mines are currently pursuing, the tests provide some key observations about tailings performance at pilot scale operations in natural conditions.
Srboljub Masala's presentation was part of the Oil Sands Tailings 2014 conference, organized by OSTRF, University of Alberta at Lake Louise, Alberta, Dec 7-10, 2014.
