News Beyond Our Borders

B.C. engineers disciplined

CTV Vancouver – Three engineers have been disciplined nearly eight years after the Mount Polley disaster, one of Canada’s worst mining catastrophes.

The tailings dam at the Mount Polley copper and gold mine failed in August 2014, releasing more than 20 million cubic metres of mining wastewater into surrounding waterways in B.C.’s Interior.

Engineers and Geoscientists British Columbia, a provincial regulatory and licensing body, said investigation into the Mount Polley disaster was among its most complex cases, taking years to complete. The regulator reviewed thousands of documents including contracts, technical reports and drawings, correspondence and daily site reports.

During disciplinary hearings, it did not make allegations or findings as to the cause of the embankment failure.

That investigation resulted in two former engineers being ordered to pay a combined $226,500. A third has been temporarily suspended and ordered to complete additional training.

Former engineers Todd Martin and Stephen Rice were ordered to pay $94,000 and $132,500, respectively, in fines and legal fees after the panel found both acted unprofessionally.

The regulator said Martin, who was responsible for the geotechnical engineering work at the mine, admitted in a consent order that some of his work was not consistent with prudent engineering practices, including his failure to recommend drilling to improve embankment foundation soils and his failure to record important field observations in 2011. Martin resigned his licence in 2020.

Rice’s unprofessional conduct included failing to properly fill the role of review engineer and allowing a junior engineer with little experience in embankment design to act in a senior role on the project, the regulator said. Rice resigned in 2018.

Neither is permitted to practise professional engineering in British Columbia; however, they can reapply under conditions.

Laura Fidel, who was the junior engineer, was found to have failed to ensure sufficient observation of the dam and to monitor seepage flows that could provide evidence of unsafe embankment conditions. The panel ordered her to undergo more training and suspended her registration as a professional engineer for two months.

After the breach, Engineers and Geoscientists B.C. says it also took actions to improve dam safety, including producing professional practice guidelines relating to dam foundations, updating existing guidelines to clarify certain duties and hosting professional development seminars.

It is currently updating guidelines on legislated dam safety reviews, it said.

“The conclusion of these cases, combined with resources we’ve developed to improve dam safety, will strengthen our professions and our province’s environmental safeguards,” said engineers and Geoscientists B.C. CEO Heidi Yang in a statement.

Proposed change to definition of engineer opposed

Engineers Canada – A change to the definition of the term “engineer” that is being proposed to the Canadian Standard of the American Society for Testing Materials (ASTM) F2783 has been flagged.

The change is specifically related to ASTM F2783-20 – Standard Practice for Design, Manufacture, Operation, Maintenance, and Inspection of Amusement Rides and Devices, in Canada.

The current definition states that an engineer is “defined by and licensed in accordance with the applicable provincial or territorial statute.” The proposed change would be that an engineer is “defined in accordance with the applicable local statutes or by the AHJ”. (AHJ stands for authority having jurisdiction.)

It is understood that the change is being proposed to “harmonize the Canadian version of the code with the U.S. version.”

Engineers Canada pointed out to the American Society for Testing Materials (ASTM) International in a letter that in Canada, the terms “professional engineer” and “engineer” are restricted by provincial law. Those terms are used in reference to individuals who hold a licence with a provincial or territorial engineering regulator. Just as it is in the medical and legal professions, engineers in Canada are licences to be held accountable in the provinces in which they conduct their engineering work. Legislation in all Canadian provinces and territories provide engineering regulators the mandate to regulate the practice of engineering in the public interest.

Research advances carbon-capture and storage

The Kindersley Clarion – Improving how carbon dioxide is stored and absorbed when it’s pumped underground for safe, long-term storage is the focus of work being done by a university of Alberta researcher.

Amy Tsai, a Faculty of engineering professor, is closely looking at the processes of carbon capture and storage (CCS) to get a better idea of how CO2 is transported and dissolved in deep underground saline aquifers.

These natural geological formations of porous rocks filled with salty water store and eventually absorb the CO2 as part of the rocks over decades, helping mitigate atmospheric emissions.

Saline basins are already being used in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Tsai said they hold massive potential for CCS, noting that the underground formations can store millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.

However, the amount of CO2 that can be injected at any given site and how quickly it can be injected still needs to be discovered.

“Having that data is crucial for assessing suitable CO2 storage sites and for successful computer calculations for CCS processes,” said Tsai.

To get more accurate measurements, Tsai’s lab is exploring at a very small scale how the CCS process works when the CO2 is injected underground at the supercritical, or heated, high-pressure stage. Pushing the CO2 to that stage is a necessary part of carbon capture and storage.

However, supercritical CO2 is difficult to visualize at pore scales. Tsai’s lab is capturing the dynamics of how CO2 dissolves and transfers into water and saline once it is underground by using microscopes and high-speed imaging and by mimicking the same conditions as a deep saline aquifer.

“We’re looking at how much and how fast CO2 can be stored in the brine at a small scale, comparable to factors such as how porous the rocks are.”

The research allows the rock pores to be closely viewed for any impurities, such as salt crystals, that could block the way and hinder the injection of the CO2.

“We’ll now be able to see the whole process in a very clear way and this will help determine a storage rate that will let us know how fast and at what volume we can transfer and store carbon dioxide at a particular site.

“That knowledge will help give resource companies a better idea of their capacity for carbon transfer and storage.”

Tsai’s work also explores the process of using CO2 in enhanced oil recovery, which injects carbon dioxide underground while the oil is pumped out.

Using additives, such as foam, polymers and nanoparticles, Tsai and her team hope to shed light on how CO2 interacts with the substances to displace thick, sticky oil and ultimately extract more.

The results are important for oil and gas companies seeking to extract more oil using supercritical CO2 while mitigating emissions, Tsai added.

Tsai’s team began its research in 2017, publishing papers that detail insights into how salt crystals block pores, how CO2 transports at pore scales and how CO2 dissolves in fluids in a supercritical state.

“Some of our observations are unique for the first time, specifically for supercritical states and that’s exciting. This technique we are developing opens a lot of doors to other potential CO2 and microfluidic applications, as well as chemical engineering processes.”

Tsai’s work is funded by her Canada Research Chair in Fluids and Interfaces, the natural Sciences and engineering Research Council of Canada and Future energy Systems.

Drilling program provides communities data

Nuclear Waste Management Organization news release – The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) has completed a deep borehole drilling program to narrow in on a site for storing used nuclear fuel.

The geology of two potential areas in Ontario has been studied for more than 10 years.

Drilling program is a key milestone in the site investigations.

Approximately eight kilometres of core samples were pulled from the bedrock at two sites under consideration. Borehole drilling and testing up to 1,000 metres below the surface is part of the NWMO’s broader site investigation work to ensure the site will meet stringent regulatory requirements.

The project will be one of the largest environmental infrastructure projects in Canadian history. Studies to confirm a safe location for a deep geological repository to safely contain and isolate Canada’s used nuclear fuel are being led by some of Canada’s top geoscientists.

Canada’s plan for used nuclear fuel, known as Adaptive Phased Management, calls for centralized containment and isolation of this country’s used nuclear fuel in suitable rock formation in an area with informed and willing hosts. This drilling program will provide data that will provide insights for those communities considering hosting the project.

The NWMO is on track to finalize site selection in 2023.

Burning rocks provide insight about Mars

CBC – Rocks so hot they will melt boots exist in an area in the northwest Territories where a mineral formation could help researchers understand the geological history of Mars.

That area is known as Smoking Hills area, or Ingniryuat in Inuvialuit communities. It is where a mineral known as jarosite is located. There is a lot of it on Mars, but is only in a few locations on earth.

“You don’t see burning rocks all over the world,” said Steve Grasby, a scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada, who recently published research on the formations in the journal Chemical Geology.

Studying these formations helps those like Grasby understand Mars’ environment and how it evolved. This timeline suggests that planet could be more hospitable to life that earlier believed.

The shale in Ingniryuat were deposited around 83 million years ago in oceans with an environment comparable to today. Jarosite is found in areas of Mars assumed to be acidic, but the planet may not always have been acidic, said Grasby.

“It could be something that happened millions of years later to form those layers, just like in the Smoking Hills,” he said.

Jarosite is layered in low-grade shales at the mouth of the Horton River, where it meets the Beaufort Sea. The burning shales have such influence that the river formed a new terminus. Grasby says that is a new delta forming. On earth, smoking shales appear in other high-latitude places, such as Smoky River Alta., Northern Yukon and Greenland.

That N.W.T. area is so highly acidic that scientists need protective clothing and respirators with special filter cartridges for the fumes in order to take samples that have a negative pH. It is even more acidic than a mine tailings drainage site, where jarosite is also found.

It is also unbearably hot, making it difficult to collect samples. They were so hot they melted right through the jars and if spilled, would burn through clothing.

Oreo study making science accessible

CTV News – A mechanical engineer who studied splitting Oreo cookies hopes her research will get others curious about science.

“The best scientific research, even at MIT, is driven by curiosity to understand the world around us, when someone sees something weird or unknown and takes the time to think ‘I wonder why that happens like that?,'” said Crystal Owens, who was the lead author of a study published in the American Institute of Physics.

She wanted to determine how to twist the cookie in a way that the cream between the wafers split and perfectly distributed across both halves.

“We learned, sadly, that even if you twist an Oreo perfectly, the cream will almost always end up mostly on one of the two wafers, with a delamination of the cream, and there’s no easy way to get it to split between wafers,” Owens said. Delamination is when something splits apart into layers.

If you do manage to separate the cookie evenly, the study explains it likely wasn’t the result of your effort. It has more to do with the level of adhesion between the cream and cookie, which other factors have altered before you get the cookie, which could be a question for another study.

“We didn’t even begin to answer all of the questions someone could ask about Oreos or cookies, which is why we made our Oreometer, so anyone with access to a 3D printer can make other measurements,” Owens said.

The Oreometer is designed to split Oreo cookie with a scientifically precise amount of torque, which is a measure of force used to rotate an object.