Co-Chairmen of Clean TeQ Holdings Ltd, Robert Friedland and Jiang Zhaobai, and CEO, Sam Riggall, have announced that Clean TeQ, through its wholly owned subsidiary Clean TeQ Water Pty Ltd, has entered into a landmark agreement with Fosterville Gold Mine Pty Ltd (Fosterville) to design, supply and commission a two million litre/day Clean TeQ DeSALx® mine water treatment plant.
The award of the contract follows a period of extensive due diligence and testwork conducted by Fosterville to validate the efficacy of Clean TeQ’s system for the treatment of mining process waters. The value of the contract is AUS$3.5 million and serves as a significant milestone for the Clean TeQ Water division.
Sustainable water management is becoming critically important in the mining industry as environmental regulations are tightened globally and water scarcity increases.The Fosterville water treatment plant is an important reference project for Clean TeQ’s DeSALx® technology, which is expected to add significant momentum to the growing pipeline of Clean TeQ Water projects.
The Fosterville water treatment plant comprises an integrated precipitation and continuous ionic filtration process (DeSALx®). The precipitation process removes arsenic and antimony from the water as a co- precipitate. The water is then treated by the DeSALx® process to remove hardness, sulphate, and other dissolved metals. DeSALx® technology is ideal for complex mine wastewater treatment. The DeSALx® process can be used as a standalone or as a pretreatment for membrane based water treatment systems.
As the DeSALx® by-product is gypsum-based, it is compatible with Fosterville’s current established lime treatment facility and provides a zero-brine water treatment solution. Design of the Fosterville water treatment plant is already underway, with equipment supply, installation and commissioning all scheduled for 2018.
Clean TeQ Water is actively engaged with several mining companies globally in testing our unique continuous ion exchange systems for the treatment of process water treatment for recycling or environmental discharge.