Through industrialisation and mining, Man has had a disastrous global impact on the quality of water for human consumption, and its availability (and affordability) for agriculture or industry.
PolyGenomX offers a number of solutions capable of significantly improving the quality and availability of water while yielding other benefits such as carbon capture & storage, biomass, biodiesel, and salt conversion and disposal.
Coal Seam Gas Water Direct Utilisation
One industry which is increasingly challenged by the need to process large volumes of water contaminated with salt and other minerals, is the Coal Seam Gas Industry.
Reverse Osmosis Water – Conversion to Energy
Coal seam gas generates very large quantities of waste-water as a byproduct of gas extraction.
Water liberated as part of the gas drilling process is usually contaminated with high levels of salt in combination with a variety of other substances including heavy metals.
The traditional method of disposing of this contaminated water in the mining industry is through evaporation but given the very large volumes of water involved and the contaminants it contains this option is not environmentally sustainable. Another relatively common method of managing this water is to desalinate it using reverse osmosis (RO) and to refine the huge resultant salt burden into commercial products. Both steps of this process are very energy intensive and significantly reduce the net value of the extracted gas.
The post-RO water may then be used to grow a range of plants including bio-fuel trees (hongi, jatropha and pongamia), or timber trees with a view to the carbon credits they promise.
Raw Coal Seam Gas Water – Conversion to Energy
PolyGenomX varieties have been and can be developed to grow directly in a wide range of raw coal seam gas waters profiles.
This eliminates both the power requirements of the reverse osmosis process, and disposes of the salt and other mineral burdens directly, ecologically and profitably.
Mining Waste – Contaminated Water
The mining and refinement of mineral ores consumes large volumes of water for functions ranging from dust suppression, to providing a slurry medium, to acting as a solvent or carrier for the application of a wide range of chemicals to dissolve unwanted materials, to transporting these tailings to settling ponds.
Once at the end point of its productive process that water is usually toxic beyond use in any commercial sense and often represents both an environmental hazard and a financial burden in terms of management.
The largest scale and most traditional processes for managing contaminated waste water is to flood it into surface excavations (often the by-product of earlier open-cut extraction) to allow evaporation of the water and concentration of the waste until such time as it can be buried or, in the case of highly toxic or valuable waste, processed to render it suitable for return to the environment.
In some cases, lightly contaminated water may be pumped underground into old workings, but the risk to groundwater contamination is an ever-present risk factor in this option.
In both cases history is littered with instances where water contaminated by mining has entered the local water table or flows, usually with disastrous consequences.
The PolyGenomX Solution
The PolyGenomX (PGX) solution is significantly different to all others as it is primarily biological in nature. We can provide solutions to treat processed water by removing any salt or other contaminates from mine waste water, control seepage from various parts of mining operations into the water table and provide solutions for holding ponds at the end of their life cycle. Following mine operation, our solutions can also be applied to rehabilitate the entire mine site area back to its pre-existing vegetative state – or better.
This can be achieved using a number of different biological solutions;
1. Biological treatment of waste water using Rapid Adapture Polygenomic technology (RAPT).
- Enhanced, total water uptake by plants;
- Biological separation of contaminants from water coupled with aquifer recharge and harvest of contaminants, e.g. heavy metals, for an economic return.
- Bio-panning of tailings to harvest valuable metals for sale.
- A system for removing iron dust from ore wash-down water.
2. Phytoremediation with plants tailored specifically to respond to very high levels of contaminates in a specific area.
3. Bioremediation via an innovative algal system, for removing non-metal contaminates, combining engineering and micro-organisms capable of dealing with large volumes of waste water.
4. Development of stable, genetically adapted (non-G.M) varieties and species of plants suited to specific environmental conditions such as high salt levels, aridity, high diurnal temperature fluctuations, etc.
5. Remediation of land through plant adaption to remove contaminates, by serving as a barriers to intercept lateral seepage, reducing active surface and gully erosion, improving soil aeration and infiltration rate.
6. Post-mining restorations of native eco-systems (as far as practical) with respect to both plants and dependant fauna, and endemic stygofauna. Continued environmental monitoring to ensure ecosystem stability.
¹Phytoremediation describes the treatment of environmental problems through the use of plants that mitigate the environmental problem without the need to excavate the contaminant materials and dispose of it elsewhere. Phytoremediation consists of mitigating pollutant concentrations in contaminated soils, water, or air, with plants able to contain, degrade, or eliminate metals, pesticides, solvents, explosives, crude oil, and its derivatives, and various other contaminants from the media that contain them. (Quote Wikipedia)
²Bioremediation is the use of microorganisms metabolism to remove pollutants (Wikipedia)
