How I learned to stop worrying and love the frack

Abstract

The proposal to develop a process to treat acid mine water by ion exchange removal of the heavy metals, followed by ion exchange removal of calcium, magnesium and sulphate, and production of, primarily, a potassium nitrate product was reviewed. It is the proposer’s intention to construct a pilot plant to demonstrate this process, and the review showed this to be appropriate, as there remain a few areas of uncertainty that should be resolvable by piloting. It is concluded that it is not possible at this stage of the development to express a firm opinion about the economics of the process, primarily because the capital cost of any full scale plant is presently a little too uncertain. On what has been presented, we are confident that the pilot plant work should clear up any uncertainties to a level sufficient to enable the full-scale plant to be designed and costed with confidence. It is, however, true to say that if the pilot plant operates close to specification, then it seems unlikely that the capital cost of a full scale plant will inflate greatly over present estimates, which would indicate a profitable process