Enhanced Flocculation of Oil Sands Mature Fine Tailings Using Hydrophobically Modified Polyacrylamide Copolymers

Rhys Hripko; Vahid Vajihinejad; Fernanda LopesMotta; João B P Soares

doi:10.1002/gch2.201700135

Enhanced Flocculation of Oil Sands Mature Fine Tailings Using Hydrophobically Modified Polyacrylamide Copolymers

Glob Chall. 2018 Feb 23;2(3):1700135. doi: 10.1002/gch2.201700135. eCollection 2018 Mar 9.

Authors

Rhys Hripko¹, Vahid Vajihinejad¹, Fernanda LopesMotta¹, João B P Soares¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering University of Alberta 9211 116 St Edmonton Alberta T6G 1H9 Canada.

Abstract

Hydrophobically modified acrylamide copolymers dewater oil sands tailings more effectively than anionic polyacrylamide, but the root causes for this enhanced performance have not been investigated systematically. Polyacrylamide-poly(ethylene oxide methyl ether methacrylate) copolymers with different comonomer compositions, hydrophobic chain lengths, and molecular weights to map out these effects systematically are synthetized. Through a statistical design of experiments, it is found out that all three variables above significantly affected flocculation performance and that certain combinations achieve optimal results. The effect of centrifugation on the flocculation and dewatering performance of these polymers is also investigated.

Keywords: dewatering; flocculation; oil sands tailings; polyacrylamide‐poly(ethylene oxide methyl ether methacrylate) copolymers; statistical design.