Estimating physicochemical properties and environmental behavior of non-polar organic compounds transported by methane ebullition in an oil sands reclamation site

Syncrude's Base Mine Lake Demonstration (BML) is the first commercial demonstration of water-capped tailings technology in the oil sands industry, with the goal of developing into a self-sustaining aquatic ecosystem over time. The partitioning of organic components of residual bitumen and naphtha present in the fluid fine tailing is a critical control on their potential transport and biodegradation. Methanogenesis and associated methane ebullition observed in BML are associated with the transport of residual organic compounds to the lake surface, a process controlled by the physicochemical properties of the compounds involved. Though even comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography (GC × GC) is unable to resolve and/or identify every single compound from this mixture, we were able to use a GC × GC-based approach to estimate the physicochemical properties of the non-polar fraction of bitumen associated with gas bubbles trapped within ice from BML to assess their environmental behaviors. The modeled results indicated that the non-polar fraction of the transported bitumen generally exhibits low volatility (-5 < log PL