Along with the clay, silt and leftover bitumen in tailings ponds associated with oil sands mines, there are also a plethora of microorganisms; naturally occurring bacteria that feast on oil particles.
Professor Gerrit Voordouw at natural
oil sands outcrop near Fort McMurray
Scientists at the University of Calgary and the Universityof Alberta are studying these microbes to see how they may lower emissions andhelp speed up the process of tailings settling in tailings ponds.
“There are all kinds of cycles going on in these pondscatalyzed by microbes,” says Gerrit Voordouw, NSERC Industrial Research Chairin Petroleum Microbiology at the University of Calgary, who together with JuliaFoght, microbiology professor at the University of Alberta, leads the researchteam. The joint work on deciphering the bacteria in tailings was started inOctober 2009. Since then the team has analyzed a wide variety of samples fromtailings ponds, mined oil sands, SAGD cores and natural oil sands outcrops.
“You can go in and isolate DNA from the tailings ponds andyou can do the same with the oil sands resource,” he explains. “Once DNA, representingthe full genetic potential of this environment has been isolated, we let thesequencing machines and computers do their work. We plan to do very deep sequencingfor the tailings ponds environment, on the order of ten billion base pairs –three human genome equivalents.”
Voordouw holding bitumen tablets he collected
All that information – a database describing the geneticpotential of the microorganisms, genes and biological processes that existnaturally, referred to in science jargon as the “metagenome” – will eventuallyhelp this team and other scientists develop ways to speed up the settling rate intailings ponds and reduce their methane emissions.
“Once all this information is available, it’s truly alibrary available to anyone,” says Voordouw. “If you want to do seriousbiotechnology in the oil sands and in the tailings ponds, then this is thefirst step. People will be able to use this information for years to come.”
Julia Foght, Karen Budwill (Alberta Innovates – TechnologyFutures) and other members of the research team are also looking at themicrobial communities in coal beds and the oil sands themselves to betterunderstand how methane is generated in these environments, and what enzymes areinvolved in the natural cracking of hydrocarbons to produce methane and carbondioxide.
The $11.3 million project is being funded by Genome Canada,Genome Alberta, Genome BC, industry partners and Alberta’s research community.