Mining & Industrial Process Water Treatment
Multotec offers a range of process water treatment solutions for mining and industrial applications with Continuous Ionic Filtration CIF®. CIF® addresses acid mine drainage, treats a range of mining and industrial waters and achieves zero liquid discharge in your application.
CIF® has the unique ability to be used in a range of applications to produce fit-for-purpose water and potentially valuable by-products from "difficult to treat" waters.
Use CIF® in your mining or industrial application to:
- Remove suspended solids
- Remove valuable metals or by-products (use several CIF® systems to separate multiple metals)
- Desalinate “difficult to treat” waters with minimal to no pre-treatment!
Achieve zero liquid discharge in your application
By combining CIF® with Reverse Osmosis (to remove dissolved salts) and evaporation / crystallisation technology, CIF® can achieve a zero liquid discharge (ZLD), or 100% water recovery with no water wasted to a brine stream. Zero liquid discharge can also be achieved in certain applications by combining DeSAlx® with precipitation processes and incorporating a brine recycle stream.
Treating Mining and Industrial Water
CIF® systems can be used on many different types of mine waters to produce fit-for-purpose water and recover valuable metals, using one technology.
- Sulphate dominant water treatment: The use of DeSAlx® in combination with upfront neutralisation means removal of sulphates with a process that approaches ZLD
- Tailings water treatment: CIF® removes / reduces contaminant levels, with the possible recovery of valuable metals
- Cooling tower blowdown: CIF® manages the scaling potential or treats blowdown to be reused
- Wastewater effluent for recycling: CIF® removes TDS and dissolved organics
- Flue Gas Desulphurisation (FGD) wastewater: treatment of FGD wastewater with CIF®produces a highly concentrated gypsum slurry, or an ammonium sulphate solution (which can be used for fertiliser production)
- Oil and Gas associate water: HiROx® provides a high recovery solution for the high TDS water produced in the oil and gas industry.
A solution for Acid Mine Drainage
For acid mine drainage (AMD), a single CIF® system 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 ZLD process.
Water is a critical issue for mining operations globally
- In mines with a positive water balance, treatment to a high water quality standard before disposing of excess water is challenging as they may not disturb the local ecology.
- In mines with a negative water balance, water conservation is a big cost-incentive and treatment for recycling is the best option.