Creating environmental solutions for environmental problems at Exxaro Mining

Three years ago, Exxaro Resources approached the university to initiate a research project on their water quality, as mining coal leads to various environmental challenges that need to be addressed. The SAENSE Group from the Department of Biotechnology at the University of the Free State developed a new treatment for Exxaro’s mine drainage by conducting various experiments.

The first experiments were conducted in the laboratory with very small volumes to prove the treatment concept. After excellent results, Exxaro decided to build a pilot plant on one of their mining sites to treat the water of that area. The pilot plant was built with JoJo tanks, wood chips, PLC systems, probes, and our patented Barium Carbonate (B-DAS) technology.

The pilot plant treated over 2,5 million litres of coal mine drainage from the site with our system. The system effectively removed salts, nitrates, sulphate, iron, and various other contaminants commonly found in mine drainage. The water quality was within the South African National Standards (SANS) regulation for drinking water, an excellent result for the project. Now that the pilot phase of testing has ended, we are looking forward to move to the next research step – to build commercial scale reactors.