Disclosed herein are graphene quantum dot tagged water source treatment compounds or polymers, and methods of making and using. Also described herein are tagged compositions including an industrial water source treatment compound or polymer combined with a graphene quantum dot tagged water source treatment compound or polymer. The tagged materials are tailored to fluoresce at wavelengths with minimized correspondence to the natural or “background” fluorescence of irradiated materials in industrial water sources, enabling quantification of the concentration of the water source treatment compound or polymer in situ by irradiation and fluorescence measurement of the water source containing the tagged water source treatment compound or polymer. The fluorescence measurement methods are similarly useful to quantify mixtures of tagged and untagged water source treatment compounds or polymers present in an industrial water source.

Methods and systems for treating oil sands tailings streams at an elevated pH using lime are disclosed herein. In some embodiments, the method comprises providing a tailings stream including 10-55% solids by total weight, increasing the pH of the tailings stream by combining the tailings stream with lime to produce a lime-tailings mixture having a pH of at least 11.0, and dewatering the lime-tailings mixture to produce a first stream having 10% or less solids by total weight and a second stream having 50% or more solids by total weight. The first stream can correspond to a release water stream, and the second stream can correspond to a cake. The lime slurry can include about 10% lime by total weight, and can comprise lime hydrate, quicklime, or a combination thereof. Dewatering the lime-tailings mixture can include routing the lime-tailings mixture to a centrifuge unit and/or a pressure or vacuum filtration unit.

A bilayer electrospun membranes for treating hydraulic fracking wastewater via membrane distillation, and more particularly to bilayer electrospun membranes having an omniphobic layer to prevent low-surface tension solution wicking and an oleophobic antifouling surface to prevent foulant depositing on the membrane. Nanoparticles are decorated on the omniphobic surface through electrochemical interaction, which is coated with a fluorine monomer on the nanoparticles. A zwitterionic co-polymer is grafted using self-assembly between hydroxy groups on the antifouling surface generated by alkaline treatment and anchor segment epoxy groups on zwitterionic co-polymer.

A process for the preparation of a granulated or pelletized weak anion exchange medium from a phenol-containing organic material like peat, followed by low-temperature torrefaction of the granules to produce a high degree of physical stability of the granules at high-pH conditions, followed by chemical pretreatment of the stable granule via a hydrolysis reaction, and optionally surface treatment with acids, followed by the main chemical treatment of the hydrolyzed granule via separate aldehyde and amine reagents, or alternatively via an adduct reagent like hexamethylenetetramine is provided by this invention. The weak anion exchange medium of this invention can be used in a variety of aqueous solution treatment processes, such as wastewater treatment for removing mineral acids like H.sub.2SO.sub.4, HNO.sub.3, HCl, HBr, HF, H.sub.3PO.sub.4, HI, or formic acid from the wastewater. The resulting anion exchanger medium is particularly useful for treating wastewaters in a low-pH environment.

The invention relates to a tailings settling-dewatering-solidifying device and an experimental method thereof, which falls into the technical field of mine engineering and mine geotechnical engineering, comprising a tailings settling device including a water tank, charging barrels I and II, and a reaction tank made of a transparent material, a dewatering device including an intelligent type controller, a circular base, a gas cylinder, a permeable stone, a piston, a metal rod and a water return barrel, a solidifying device including a charging barrel III and a tailings barrel, a stirring system including a stirrer, a rotary shaft and an electric motor, a dynamic real-time monitoring system including a high-definition electronic camera and a computer, and a three-layer framework. Through integration of tailings settling-dewatering-solidifying, the device can effectively improve tailings treatment efficiency, facilitate data collection and analysis, adjust medicament concentration in real time, meet enterprises' requirements, and reduce enterprise cost.

The present invention relates to a method for treating an aqueous liquid effluent containing calcium and carbonate ions and containing precipitation-inhibiting products, said process comprising the following successive steps: a) providing an aqueous liquid effluent supersaturated with CaCO.sub.3 and containing precipitation-inhibiting products; b) having the effluent obtained in step a) pass into a reactor with high solid content with a solid content maintained between 20 and 800 g/l and integrated solid-liquid separation, at a pH comprised between 8 and 9.2 allowing in a single step precipitation in situ of the aragonite polymorph of calcium carbonate and removal of the precipitation-inhibiting products; c) recovering an aqueous liquid supernatant containing a suspended solids content of less than or equal to 0.1% by mass of the solid content in the reactor, advantageously a suspended solids content of less than 50 mg/l, the precipitation-inhibiting products being phosphonates.

A system and method for generating water concentrated in calcium bromide from produced water, to provide for drilling fluid having the calcium bromide. The technique includes flowing the produced water through a bed of ion-exchange resin to sorb bromide ions from the produced water onto the ion-exchange resin, and then regenerating the ion-exchange resin to desorb the bromide ions for combination with calcium ions to acquire an aqueous solution with calcium and bromide.

The present invention relates to a method for removing hydrocarbons from produced water, comprising: (i) separating produced water from a hydrocarbon and water mixture extracted from a subterranean formation: (ii) contacting said produced water with multivalent metal cations to produce a mixture of produced water and multivalent metal cations; and (iii) removing hydrocarbons from said mixture in a hydrocyclone and/or a compact flotation unit to give treated produced water, wherein the concentration of hydrocarbons in said produced water is less than 10% wt.

Systems and processes for water-oil separations include feeding an oil-water mixture to an inlet of a water-oil separation vessel for separation of the decontaminated water from the oil. Steam bubbles are used to facilitate the separations, where the systems and processes include a water circulation loop for circulating a portion of the decontaminated water through the water circulation loop and heating the water to generate steam via solar energy captured by the concentrated solar collector. The steam may then be fed to a distributor in a separation chamber of the water-oil separation vessel, the distributor distributing the steam in the separation chamber of the water-oil separation vessel as a plurality of bubbles, facilitating separation of oil from water.

A mineral recovery system for use in a mining operation is described. The mineral recovery system a thickener includes a process water input, an underflow output having an underflow controller configured to adjust outflow of thickened slurry from the thickener, an overflow output configured to dispense clarified water from the thickener; and a flocculant input and a flocculant dilution input, a thickener controller configured to control an operation of the thickener; and a processor executing a mining operations generated model to issue commands to the thickener controller, based on inputs of sensed conditions, wherein the mining operations model incorporates a thickener sub-model and a material sub-model, wherein the mining operations model is employed to predict a future state of a thickener based on inputs of sensed conditions in the thickener and predictions made by the thickener sub-model and the material sub-model in real time.