The absence of well-executed environmental monitoring in the Athabasca oil sands (Alberta, Canada) has necessitated the use of indirect approaches to determine background conditions of freshwater ecosystems before development of one of the Earth's largest energy deposits. Here, we use highly resolved lake sediment records to provide ecological context to ∼50 y of oil sands development and other...

This report analyzes the technical aspects and the economics of utilizing nuclear reactor to provide the energy needed for a Canadian oil sands extraction facility using SteamAssisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) technology. The energy from the nuclear reactor would replace the need for energy supplied by natural gas, which is currently burned at these facilities. There are a number of concerns surr...

in this paper shear behavior of two calcareous sands having different physical properties areinvestigated using drained and undrained triaxial tests. the investigated sands are obtained from two differentzones located in persian gulf, kish island and tonbak region. analysis based on energy aspects show thatfriction angle in these soils, having crushable particles, is formed of three components:...

B. Grabowska, M. Holtzer, R. Dańko, M. Górny, A. Bobrowski, E. Olejnik; AGH University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Foundry Engineering, Krakow, Poland Possibilities of cross-linking of new polymer binders from the BioCo group, their hardening in moulding sands at the application of cross-linking agents both physical and chemical are presented. Their thermal stability was determined. I...

Federal legislation expresses a long-term goal of reducing indoor radon to levels comparable to those outdoors. A thorough understanding of the behavior of radon and its progeny in the outdoor environment is therefore important We report near-surface measurements of radon, attached-to-aerosol progeny, and unattachcd-toaerosol progeny in the contrasting environments of the forested hill country ...

This investigation was conducted in order to identify the heavy minerals of the beach sands of Carmel Bay, and to analyze the distribution of these minerals, Carmel Bay offers the opportunity to study heavy mineral assemblages in a small isolated bay, internally divided by a submarine canyon, containing smaller pocket beaches influenced by several geological formations and two fresh water strea...

We resolve the problem of small-space approximate selection in random-order streams. Specifically, we present an algorithm that reads the n elements of a set in random order and returns an element whose rank differs from the true median by at most n while storing a constant number of elements and counters at any one time. This is optimal: it was previously shown that achieving better accuracy r...

Does carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) make sense in the oil sands?

This paper presents a practical sequence to study sand grains at the macroscopical scale. The approach consists of two mains phases, the recognition of the grains and the assessment of some of its characteristics. The method is validated on the dimensional features by comparison with a sieving procedure through the analysis of eight large sand samples of different locations.

Moving bed biofilm reactors (MBBRs) are an effective biotechnology for treating industrial wastewater. Biomass retention on moving bed biofilm reactor (MBBR) carriers (biofilm support materials), allows for the ease-of-operation and high treatment capacity of MBBR systems. Optimization of MBBR systems has largely focused on aspects of carrier design, while little attention has been paid to enha...