Mining Industry Making Money Off Wastewater

The mining market has emerged as “one of the most dynamic” industries for water and wastewater treatment, according to a Frost & Sullivan analysis.

"By 2016, the industry’s demand for water-treatment equipment and services is expected to be worth $3.6B," the Guardian reported, citing Frost & Sullivan.

Two factors are responsible for this trend: new regulations, and the increasing value of metals recovered during treatment processes.

"Historically, wastewater treatment was categorized exclusively as a business cost, but advances in metal-removal technologies now mean there could be money to be made too," the Guardian reported.

The techniques that have made this possible include sulphide precipitation, which injects sulphide into wastewater in order to turn liquid metals into solids, which can be sold or discarded.

“In the large majority of mining waste, the metals of value are mixed in a cocktail that contains basically the whole periodic table of elements. A lot of these elements have no value and some of them [won’t] be removed because they are not toxic,” said David Kratochvil, a top executive at Vancouver water treatment firm BioteQ Environmental Technologies, per the Guardian.“The trick is to be able to select the metals of value from this cocktail.”

Fredrick Royan, global research director for environmental markets at Frost & Sullivan, said, “Metal recovery is especially interesting on the precious metals side, such as gold, copper and [other] highly valuable metals,” according to the Guardian.

Adrian Brown, a wastewater consultant, explained the incentive for companies to make money off wastewater treatment, per Mining Global.

“[Mining firms] are pretty much stuck with treating the wastewater whether it’s economic or not,” he said. “So suddenly any metal recovery is beneficial in the sense that it has the ability to either reduce your project costs or, at the very least, to dispose of the extracted material from your project at zero or no cost.”

The EPA offers this guide on mining wastewater treatment technologies.