Clean-iX® (Metals Recovery)
Multotec ion exchange (IX) technologies can be used in acid mine drainage treatment. These proven technologies provide an effective chemical precipitation solution to scavenge toxic heavy metals and remove over 99.4% sulphate content of water, helping to prevent ground and surface water pollution from mines.
Unlike conventional batch-based ion exchange technologies, Multotec uses a continuous counter-current solution. This allows a continuous feed of acid mine water, optimised resin usage and management and reduced operator involvement.
Both CIF and Clean-iX were developed by Multotec’s Australian technology partner Clean TeQ, and offer the following benefits:
Achieve your AMD treatment goals with Multotec technologies.
Clean-iX® (Metals Recovery)
Operates on solutions with up to 100 ppm solids, minimising pre-filtration requirements, requires up to 25% less resin than fixed bed systems & allows for fluctuations in feed grade.
CIF® (Process Water Treatment)
Simultaneous removal of suspended solids & dissolved ions, CIF® handles in-column precipitation, has high solids tolerance & offers optimised resin inventory.
Water treatment plants that treat AMD with CIF® and Clean-iX® technologies achieve a wide range of benefits that contribute to a more economical, reliable and environmentally sustainable solution:
Acid mine drainage causes harsh environmental pollution problems due to its high acidity, toxic metals and sulphate contents. Treating this environmentally challenging problem prevents toxic water from damaging the environment from its ground or surface water locations. In addition, it is possible to recover resources like ferric hydroxide, ferrite, rare earth metals, sulphur and sulphuric acid in the AMD treatment process.
The active treatment of acid mine drainage is swiftly moving to treating the actual acid mine water directly through water treatment plants using lime or other neutralising materials. This reduces the acidity, which causes metals to precipitate out of the contaminated water.
Multotec’s treatment for AMD requires a single CIF® system, which can extract acid from the water, producing neutral water for discharge. The increase in pH by the system causes several elements to precipitate, providing further water purification. This is possible due to the novel design of CIF®, allowing for in-column precipitation and solids handling.
If the resultant TDS of the product water is too high, the CIF® system can be replaced by a DeSALx® system. CIF®/DeSAlx® can also be used in conjunction with a precipitation step, which incorporates a brine recycle to allow for a zero liquid discharge (ZLD) process.
Passive treatment of acid mine drainage and other methods used to prevent and clean up acid mine drainage.
Acid drainage is a problem that is caused by the outflow of acidic water from a mining site, stemming primarily from oxidation of iron sulphide (pyrite or fool's gold), often found with valuable metals. It causes a major problem for many hard rock mines and coal mines.
The presence of excessive and abnormal sulphuric leaching can have devastating environmental impacts by rapidly altering the pH of water sources and poison entire ecosystems. Severely affected systems can be completely inhospitable to aquatic life.