Technical Blog
Practical insights on water treatment technology, Alberta regulatory developments, and emerging applications from the GWTS technical team.
Tailings Dewatering in the Oil Sands: Centrifugation vs. Filtration Approaches
Mature Fine Tailings (MFT) treatment is one of the most technically and commercially significant challenges in Alberta oil sands operations. We break down the two dominant active dewatering pathways — centrifugation and pressure filtration — and their applicability across different MFT compositions and project scales.
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Lithium Extraction Water Treatment: How RO Enables the DLE Supply Chain
Direct Lithium Extraction is moving from laboratory to commercial scale across Western Canada. Advanced RO plays a critical but underappreciated enabling role in DLE process trains. This post covers the water chemistry challenges, RO integration points, and lessons from GWTS's own DLE demonstration project in Calgary (2022–2024).
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AER Directive 085: What Oil Sands Operators Need to Know About Tailings Obligations
Alberta Energy Regulator Directive 085 replaced Directive 074 as the primary regulatory framework for oil sands tailings management. The new directive creates binding performance targets and timelines for fluid tailings volume reduction. We outline what this means for operators — and how active water treatment and dewatering technologies create compliance pathways.
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SWRO at 1,200 psi: Treating High-Salinity Oil Sands Pond Water
As oil sands saline pond TDS concentrations climb above 35,000 mg/L, conventional RO systems can no longer achieve meaningful water recovery. Seawater Reverse Osmosis (SWRO) operated at 1,000–1,200 psi offers a membrane-based alternative to thermal evaporation. We review the process design requirements, pretreatment critical path, and lessons from GWTS's Northern Alberta SWRO pilot (Sept–Dec 2025).
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Pilot Testing Methodology: How to Design a Membrane Pilot That De-Risks Capital
A well-designed membrane pilot program delivers the data needed to specify a full-scale system with confidence. A poorly designed one produces ambiguous results and delays capital decisions. This post covers the key design decisions — scale, duration, sampling protocols, performance metrics, and how to translate pilot data into a bankable basis of design.
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Water Treatment and Indigenous Reconciliation in Northern Alberta: Moving Beyond Compliance
Industrial water treatment projects in Northern Alberta operate on or near the traditional territories of multiple First Nations. Moving from compliance-focused consultation to genuine partnership requires changes to how projects are structured, staffed, and governed from the earliest planning stages. We share GWTS's approach and what meaningful Indigenous participation looks like in practice.
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