BioteQ Environmental Technologies, a leader in the treatment of industrial wastewater, is to restart water treatment operations at the Mt. Gordon mine site in Australia. This will take around six to eight weeks to resume. BioteQ recently met with senior management of Birla Mt. Gordon (mine operators), a subsidiary of Aditya Birla Minerals, to review detailed plans for the restart. It will replace damaged equipment and make modifications to the plant to meet current water treatment requirements. Initially the plant will use the original process plan to recover copper from acidic mine drainage at the design capacity treatment rate of 230 m3/h.
Brad Marchant, BioteQ’s Chief Executive Officer, said: “We are pleased to be restarting operations at the Mt. Gordon site. This puts an important asset back into production that will reduce environmental liabilities for the mine owner, at a lower life cycle cost for water treatment compared to alternative processes.”
The Mt. Gordon water treatment operations were suspended in January as a result of an unprecedented storm that forced the evacuation of the site, and caused damage to portions of BioteQ’s plant equipment and inventories as well as site infrastructure. BioteQ has been working with the company’s insurers to settle damage claims, and with Birla management to determine the revised water treatment needs at the site.
Subject to successful restart of operations, BioteQ has proposed to make further modifications to its plant to provide additional water treatment services on a fee basis, to allow discharge of the treated water to reduce the water inventory at the site.