Quantifying fugitive gas emissions from an oil sands tailings pond with open-path Fourier transform infrared  measurements

You, Yuan; Moussa, Samar G.; Zhang, Lucas; Fu, Long; Beck, James; Staebler, Ralf M.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-14-945-2021

Articles | Volume 14, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-14-945-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-14-945-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 14, issue 2

Research article

|

08 Feb 2021

Research article |

| 08 Feb 2021

Quantifying fugitive gas emissions from an oil sands tailings pond with open-path Fourier transform infrared measurements

Yuan You, Samar G. Moussa, Lucas Zhang, Long Fu, James Beck, and Ralf M. Staebler

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-14-945-2021-supplement

Data sets

Emissions from tailings ponds to the atmosphere, oil sands region Environment and Climate Change Canada http://data.ec.gc.ca/data/air/monitor/source-emissions-monitoring-oil-sands-region/emissions-from-tailings-ponds-to-the-atmosphere-oil-sands-region/

Short summary

Tailings ponds in the Alberta oil sands represent an insufficiently characterized source of fugitive emissions of pollutants to the atmosphere. In this study, a novel approach of using a Fourier transform infrared spectrometer along with measurements of atmospheric turbulence is shown to present a practical, non-intrusive method of quantifying emission rates for ammonia, alkanes, and methane. Results from a 1-month field study are presented and discussed.