Challenge Partners
Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance (COSIA) is a unique alliance of oil sands producers focused on accelerating environmental performance in Canada’s oil sands. COSIA enables collaboration and innovation between thinkers from industry, government, academia and the wider public to improve measurement, accountability and performance in the oil sands across four environmental priority areas of Greenhouse Gases, Land, Water, and Tailings. COSIA members search the world for solutions to our toughest problems. COSIA’s Water EPA aspires to be world leaders in water management, producing Canadian energy with no adverse impact on water.
Dr. Mohamed Gamal El-Din is the NSERC Senior Industrial Research Chair in Oil Sands Tailings Water Treatment and a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Alberta. Dr. Gamal El-Din has an active research program in the area of oil sands tailings water treatment. The goal of this research area is to provide not only innovative treatment and reclamation approaches to protect environmental and public health, but also to facilitate water reuse and/or the safe discharge of treated process water into the receiving environment while ensuring the environment and human health are protected.
COSIA’s Water Environmental Priority Area (EPA) and Dr. Gamal El-Din have formed a research partnership to reduce water use and increase water recycling rates within oil sands operations. Together, they have identified a need for low-energy technologies to treat dissolved organic compounds present in Oil Sands Process Water (OSPW).
