TEMEC Engineering Group – Tailing Ponds

3GA Marine Ltd. provided Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering Design Classification, Analysis, Finite Element Analysis to produce the floating pipe supports for CEDA.

CEDA provides maintenance, turnaround, mechanical & construction services for oil and gas, refinery, petrochemical, mining and other industrial facilities. One of their Oil sands applications is the provision of Dredge equipment used in the Tailings recycling process. 

Tailings Management

“Tailings are a byproduct of our process to extract bitumen from oil sand. Tailings are composed of a mixture of water, sand, clay, fine solids, residual hydrocarbon and salts – all of which are naturally found in oil sands deposits.”

“Tailings are placed in large landforms commonly referred to as settling basins or tailings ponds. Tailings ponds serve two uses – one, as the recycled water source for our plants and, two, as a containment area which enables tailings to segregate prior to further dewatering for use in reclamation activities.”

“The primary tailings management challenge is the long period of time it takes for some solid components to settle. While the sand settles rapidly, clay and fine solids (together called fluid fine tailings or FFT) can take decades to settle on their own.”

“Over 85% of the water used in the bitumen extraction process is recycled from our tailings settling basins.”

“In the settling process, water rises to the top of the tailings pond and is then reused in the bitumen extraction process. Over 85 percent of the water we use is recycled from our settling basins. ”

3GA developed the detail implementation engineering for floating pontoons that support the dredge trailing and floating discharge pipes  and enable them to be disconnected and reconnected at times of dredge maintenance and relocation.

Company Name:
CEDA.

Project Name:
Floating Pipe Supports

Start Date:
Q3 2013

Completion Date:
Q1 2014

Location:
Equipment for Oil Sands

3GA Contact:
Daniel McIntyre

Sector:
Oil Extraction

Industry:
Oil Sands Tailings Reclamation

Scope:
Design, non-linear Finite element Analysis, sourced equipment, full set drawings, working drawings

Length of Assignment:
120 days

Challenges:
quick turn around, design configuration for dredge specific application

Final Outcome:
Installed and Operational on a number of sites