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Facility too late to resolve crisis

Johannesburg – Ion exchange, the technology that Trailblazer Technologies wants to use to process South African acid mine drainage into water for stimulating agricultural production, also involves all the elements of creating thousands of jobs.

But this can take place only years from now. According to the timelines applicable to the Western Utilities Corporation (WUC) project, it will take at least five to six years before an ion-exchange facility can be built and commissioned.

And this is while the Central Witwatersrand Basin’s acid mine water will surface during the course of this year.

To tell the truth, its emergence was predicted for January this year – but no-one knows exactly when it will occur.

This is because the underground water channels created from around a century of mining below the Boksburg-Germiston region make a more accurate prediction too difficult.

It will take at least two to three years to test the technology of an ion-exchange process in a pilot plant.

It could easily take another two to three years to build an industrial plant.

It's hopelessly too late to resolve the impending crisis in the Vaal River scheme, but Trailblazer could in time become an important factor at, for instance, mines with individual water problems, such as large coal mines.

On the other hand, the “acid mine-water space”, as innovators and entrepreneurs refer to the problem, has in recent years begun to resemble a Formula 1 race track with too many drivers.

In South Africa especially, with its mining-driven economy and industrialised manufacturing sector, there is a frantic rush below the radar to find both solutions and funding for research.

Existing technology to produce potable water from acid mine effluent involves neutralisation with lime and limestone and the extraction of heavy metals from the water.

Large quantities of salts then remain in the water. The three existing plants for extracting these salts use reverse osmosis – an expensive dual process that is subsidised by mines and probably written off the books as rehabilitation costs.

The ABC process [created by the CSIR] however uses barium carbonate, which desalinates the water in a single process.

If the water is first neutralised using the appropriate process, this costs half as much as reverse osmosis.

According to WUC’s proposal it would purify water at an industrial cost of R4.80/m3. It would then sell it to Rand Water for R5.70 – slightly more than Rand Water charges bulk buyers and industrial water consumers.

Residential consumers pay R10 to R11/m3.

But Trailblazer’s ion-exchange process would not purify the water for human consumption, but rather process it into highly fertile agricultural water.

It would then be discharged into rivers from which it would be distributed to farmers along the river banks.

It's not difficult to see how politicians can be beguiled by it.

There are several questions requiring answers before this plan should be implemented.

According to its inventor, John Brewsey, operating costs will be about R2.80/m3. How could this expense be recovered if the water is discharged into rivers?

It would require a distributional infrastructure needing enormous investment.

But this is not an insurmountable problem – just one that cannot be tackled at this stage in the face of the country’s biggest impending environmental crisis with a solution on the table.

Ion exchange was developed in Chile in South America by a fertiliser producer, SQM, a supplier of specialist plant nutrients.

This is what drew Brewsey’s attention. He started to experiment by helping irrigation farmers in the Sundays River Valley in the Eastern Cape experiencing production problems. The Sundays River apparently also has problems of pollution.

But in time he started researching the application of the process to acid mine water. Last year he and Alistair Forsyth, who had for decades been friendly with Professor Anthony Turton, were awarded patent rights.

Brewsey calls the process the KNEW (Potassium-Nitrate Ex-Waste) technology.

Laboratory tests were finalised. Now he and Forsyth need to find an investor to build a pilot plant.
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