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Geotechnical News • September 2014
www.geotechnicalnews.com
WASTE GEOTECHNICS
New Industrial Research Chair
aims to manage tailings
from the greatest show unearthed
Vivian Giang
Dr. Ward Wilson is an internationally
recognized expert in mine waste man-
agement systems, a field that has taken
him to numerous mining sites around
the world. From Oceania to the Ameri-
cas, southeast Asia and even Europe,
Wilson has dealt with the tailings from
various industrial and metallic miner-
als, including silver, gold, potash and
uranium, before delving into fuel min-
erals such as coal. It was only a matter
of time until he would begin working
on the tailings from one of the world’s
biggest mining projects – Alberta’s oil
sands.
The Alberta oil sands cover an area
of about 142,200 km² and contain an
estimated 400,000,000 m³ (2.5 trillion
barrels) of bitumen. With today’s tech-
nology, about 27,000,000 m³ of bitu-
men are considered proven reserves.
This volume of oil is the third-largest
proven reserve in the world only being
exceeded by reserves in Venezuela and
Saudi Arabia.
Wilson vividly remembers the first
time he came in contact with oil
sands, albeit very briefly, in the
1980s. “While working as a consult-
ing engineer with Clifton Associates
Ltd. in Saskatchewan, a lab supervisor
showed me a jar of oil sands that her
grandmother received from a tour of
the Great Canadian Oil Sands Ltd. in
Alberta. I had never seen anything like
it before,” he says.
However, with his consulting work at
the time and subsequent return to aca-
demia, Wilson put aside the jar of oil
sands and concentrated on developing
extensive research programs in soil
cover systems for mine waste manage-
ment and long-term closure of tailings
and waste rock, in addition to research
programs to characterize waste rock
systems for the control of acid rock
drainage (ARD). Wilson’s notewor-
thy contributions include leading the
development of the comprehensive
numerical model “SoilCover” for the
prediction of soil cover performance
under the Canadian Mine Environment
Neutral Drainage (MEND) Program
and being responsible for the bench-
mark research programs for predicting
and monitoring of the performance of
the cover systems at the Equity Silver
(Canada) and Kidston Gold (Australia)
mines. Wilson is currently engaged in
large scale-up experiments for waste
rock at the Grasberg (Indonesia) and
Antamina (Peru) mines to investigate
various mitigation techniques as well
as a new and innovative research pro-
gram for the blending of tailings and
waste rock (Paste Rock) to produce
new high-strength sealing materials
for mine waste management systems.
Wilson also served as a specialist con-
sultant to several large international
mining companies and collaborated on
significant research programs includ-
ing the well-known ARD Risk Review
completed by Rio Tinto in the mid-
2000s. In addition, Wilson was the
lead author responsible for the chapter
on “Prevention and Mitigation” in the
Global Acid Rock Drainage (GARD)
Guide prepared for International
Network for Acid Prevention, which is
now becoming recognized as an inter-
national industry standard for ARD.
Throughout this time, Wilson taught
at several universities, including the
University of Manitoba, University
of Saskatchewan and University of
British Columbia. Again, it was only
a matter of time before he would
complete his tour of Western Canada
and take on full professorship at the
University of Alberta in 2010. There,
he quickly began transferring his
expertise in mine waste management
to tackle the unique tailings challenges
in the oil sands industry, bringing him
back to the jar of oil sands he had seen
nearly three decades prior.
“[The Alberta oil sands] is the biggest
mining project in the world. The oper-
ations and investment that are happen-
ing here are bigger than anything I’ve
ever seen,” says Wilson.
In Northern Alberta, water-based
processes are used to extract bitumen
from mined oil sands ore. The oil
sands industry has always operated
under conditions of zero discharge for
process affected water, and tailings
impoundments are used almost exclu-
sively for waste management. The
combined footprint for these impound-
ments is currently more than 130 km².
Over two years of extensive consulta-
tion with industry, academic collabo-
rators and industry regulators, Wilson
developed a comprehensive research
program aimed to significantly
advance the rate at which tailings