Combined Evaporation and Freeze-Thaw Effects in Polymer Amended Mature Fine Tailings

Evaporation and freeze-thaw phenomena are known to contribute to dewatering and densification of fine tailings streams generated from oil sands bitumen extraction. This thesis reports on studies of 1-Dimensional freezing of polymer-amended mature fine tailings that have different stress histories with respect to degree of desiccation by evaporation and self-weight consolidation. Freezing is accomplished using an electric cooling plate specially mounted in an insulated column. Polymer-amended tailings are placed at a lift of half-meter, which has been allowed to consolidate. Temperature is recorded using thermocouples, while the densification and dewatering is tracked by monitoring of water content, pore water pressure, and cryo-suctions. After one freeze-thaw cycle is applied, the samples are cored and then loaded to examine differences in consolidation behaviour post-freezing.