GE and Penrice Soda Holdings, working together as GE and Penrice Consortium, have announced an agreement with QGC for a brine pilot plant in South Australia.
The brine pilot plant at Penrice’s chemical works at Osborne is part of a wider initiative by the coal seam gas industry to investigate the technical and commercial viability of producing table salt and soda ash from brine, which is a by-product of coal seam gas water treatment.
The brine pilot plant will demonstrate the ability of the GE-Penrice process to extract and selectively precipitate salts such as sodium bicarbonate, sodium carbonate and sodium chloride from the final brine streams.
The plant will be operational in early 2012 and success will provide new opportunities for the management of coal seam gas water.
The BPP will be based on technology developed by the GE and Penrice Consortium, for the purpose of extracting salts from CSG water and produce commercial grades of sodium bicarbonate, soda ash and sodium chloride.