Measurement of Fugitive Greenhouse Gas Emissions from an Oil Sands Tailings Pond

• Author / Creator

  Hao Shi

• Alberta oil sands tailings ponds are under the concern of releasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) including carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4). In this research, Eddy Covariance (EC) technique was used to measure GHGs emissions from an oil sands tailings pond. A tower with EC instruments mounted on top was placed at the south bank of the tailings pond from July 27, 2017 to September 29, 2017. EC instruments mainly included gas analyzers for concentration measurements of both CO2 and CH4, and a 3D sonic anemometer for wind speed measurement. Collected data were processed using EddyPro software, and analyzed to show relationships between measured concentrations, calculated fluxes and potential impacting factors such as wind speed, wind direction, and temperature. The median concentration measurements of CO2 and CH4 over the entire measurement period are 385.3 ppmv and 3.0 ppmv, respectively. The median flux measurements of CO2 and CH4 are 6.8 g/m2/d and 6.5 g/m2/d, respectively as flux values over the entire measurement period. The footprint analysis of the flux measurements shows that the majority of source areas contributing to the flux values was within the boundary of the pond, when the EC tower was downwind of the tailings pond. The flux values obtained using EC were compared to previous flux measurements at the same tailings pond by flux chamber technique, and synchronous independent EC, flux chamber, flux gradient, inverse dispersion modelling (IDM) measurements by Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC). CH4 concentration measurements and flux calculations from this study were aligned with flux measurements reported by ECCC. The median CH4 flux measurements of this thesis of 6.5 g/m2/d is 12% different from the ECCC’s median flux measurements value of 7.4 g/m2/d. Concurrently historical flux chamber measurements of this target pond are lower than the EC flux measurements due to the inability of flux chamber to capture the heterogeneity of the tailings pond. Therefore, it is recommended to use EC for measuring GHG flux from oil sands tailings ponds.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Greenhous Gas
  • Fugitive Emission
  • Eddy Covariance
  • Oil Sands Tailings Pond

• Graduation date

  Spring 2022

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-3j5a-j012

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.