DOES THE HYDROPHOBICITY OF POLYACRYLAMIDE COPOLYMERS AFFECT THE FLOCCULATION OF OILS SANDS TAILINGS?

Oil sands mature fine tailings are stable suspensions of clay particles and residual bitumen that consolidate and dewater very slowly. This work selected a series of amphiphilic copolymers of acrylamide with comonomers presenting different hydrophobic chains (butyldiglycol methacrylate, 2-dimethylaminoethyl methacrylate, n-butyl methacrylate, and n-octyl methacrylate) and used them to flocculate and dewater oil sands tailings. It analyzes the influence of molecular weight, hydrodynamic volume, and hydrophobicity of these polymers on their flocculation and dewatering behavior using initial settling rate, supernatant turbidity, capillary suction time, and solid sediments content. The performance of these novel amphiphilic copolymer flocculants depended mostly on their hydrodynamic volumes and on their degree of hydrophobicity.