Modular Water Treatment
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The reduction of pollutant load from operational and legacy mines poses a substantial financial burden.
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The treatment of circum-neutral mine drainage is often overlooked in research and technology development.
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Passive treatment is often not the most effective and practical option for the treatment.
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Our innovative modular water treatment provides a solution to contaminated water for a positive environmental impact.
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Our Philosphy
We consider a holistic approach to active water treatment, focussing on opportunities to reduce cost and increase sustainability.
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Cost-treatability curves can be a useful tool in understanding the cost of treating mine drainage.
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With the development and introduction of a system focusing on reduced cost such the ‘Sustainable Active Treatment’ system a ‘Whole Catchment Approach’ to legacy mine water remediation strategy can be considered.
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Consideration for multiple discharges in a catchment area rather than single point discharges could allow for more cost effective legacy mine water remediation.
Background
A large amount of mine sites globally are recognised to generate discharges in the circum-neutral range, and in recent times regulatory and social pressures have resulted in an increased focus on improving discharge quality for these sites.
Treatment of circum-neutral drainage depends on site specific conditions, and is very sensitive to water quality targets. We have developed an assessment methodology based around a treatability curve approach. This allows generation of a cost-treatability curve that can be based on site specific factors or “levers” that drive water treatment efficiency and cost.
Reducing The Cost And Increasing The Sustainability of Active Treatment
Although active treatment such as HDS can be considered “efficient” on the basis of typical cost effectiveness the consideration of sustainability and “green credentials” is becoming increasingly more important with an industry focus on environment and social governance (ESG) and decarbonisation.
“Passive” treatment systems have attracted much interest and investment/research as they are considered to be more aligned with sustainability/ESG/decarbonisation metrics.
However for many sites active treatment is likely to be continued to be required for a number of practical reasons and as such if true life cycle sustainability is to be assessed then a more holistic view is required to be taken.
We have an alternative approach termed Sustainable Active Treatment (SAT) that applies a more holistic and whole life cycle methodology to consideration of active treatment technology.
Energy is the key “sustainability” metric
The energy needed is proportional to the flow and quality targets in most active systems.
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A passive or “sustainable active” treatment system can break this energy linkage.
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The energy required is largely supplied by the gravitational flow of the water and molecular level energy changes related to interactions of water with media (sorption).
Sustainability
The potential for economic recovery of metals is an important aspect of a sustainable system. Sorption is reversable and selective recovery of metals is possible by using pH.
Conclusion
Consideration of a holistic approach to water treatment when considering active system provides many opportunities to reduce cost and improve sustainability metrics.
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For circum-neutral sites adoption of a cost curve-based assessment and the SAT approach will facilitate increased focus on both cost reduction and an increase in sustainability (this may be particularly so for legacy sites).
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This holistic approach further opens the possibility to look at water treatment as a ‘Whole Catchment Approach’ whereby consideration of treatment of multiple discharges are considered together rather than focusing on achieving very high removal rates from single point source discharges.