Mining And Minerals

Today’s mining activities have some of the highest use rates of water in industry. At the same time, the mining operations are coming under increasing scrutiny from a regulatory standpoint – with new limits affecting the industry’s ability to grow.

Envirogen offers a broad portfolio of technologies that can impact a number of water treatment areas in mining facilities. These include process and potable water, mining run-off waters, wastewater and groundwater treatment applications. Today, we’re at the forefront of technology development for selenium treatment for coal mining water treatment with our fluidized bed reactor (FBR) technology, and have proprietary ion exchange (IX) technology to treat contaminated mine water

Process Water

Mining Water/Runoff

Groundwater

Envirogen’s patented fluidized bed reactor (FBR) biological treatment technology has been proven as a ‘best in class’ approach for handling both large and small flow rates of selenium-containing mining wastewater, with low capital and operating costs, over a wide range of influent and discharge limit conditions. The noteworthy features of Envirogen FBR technology include:

• Its ability to reduce selenium levels in water to less than 5 μg/L,
• Shorter required residence times for treatment compared to other biological treatment systems
• A smaller overall footprint.
• Responds well to changes in feed flow and composition, consistently achieving discharge limit conditions.
• Systems can be modular, with all-weather protection as needed.

Evidence of our FBR efficacy has been demonstrated at a mining water treatment operation in West Virginia, where the Envirogen FBR system achieved <4.7ppb selenium effluent in a 2800 GPM, 3 reactor, anoxic water treatment system. Read more about our experience in mining.

On the low-flow end of the spectrum, our patented, high efficiency, regenerable ion exchange technology offers water treatment solutions that can be highly tailored to variable waste stream compositions and overall treatment system configurations. These ion exchange systems offer a small footprint and minimal operational requirements, allowing them to be used in tight spaces or remote locations.

For higher flow and higher nitrate concentrations we utilize our fluidized bed reactor biological treatment for high efficiency removal of nitrates. This process allows mines to use efficient explosives – producing more charges per day and increased production.

Envirogen has the technologies to recover metals from mining wastewater using either our regenerable ion exchange systems combined with our brine processing area or our Advanced Metal Removal System (AMRS). These technologies are applicable to a broad range of metals, including rare earth elements (REE).

Through decades of work with ion exchange and adsorbent and reactive medias, Envirogen has specialized expertise in the area of waste minimization and materials recovery. Such systems are custom-tailored to the application and are available as a process package or a full DBO solution.

In addition to designing full scale water treatment systems, we also offer small, bench-scale studies and on-site pilot-testing to validate system design and fully meet the client’s requirements. Using fundamental research, we can identify the optimal and most effective system for a particular treatment. We work with the client’s technical teams, providing research and development studies of the process from bench scale and demonstration/pilot scale which leads to the final design and process of the full-scale commercial system.

For Further Reading on Mining and Minerals Water Treatment

Solutions for Mining Wastewater Treatment

New Options for Treating Selenium in the Coal Industry

Treatment of Coal Mining Selenium Wastes