SOLUTIONS
Hydrus offers its customers a compelling value proposition, with its solutions increasing mineral resources and oil & gas outputs, while reducing wastewater treatment Capex, Opex and the environmental footprint.
Our advanced research and development is continuing to expand the applications of our technology, with significant untapped potential. Here are some examples of the current applications for the delivery of our leading edge solutions for a range of wastewater, mineral recovery and environmental remediation challenges.
Oil & gas solutions
Hydraulic fracture stimulation flowback water
Large-scale hydraulic fracture stimulation used to liberate oil and gas has created new demands, challenges and constraints for industry. These pressures mostly relate to the current methods used to supply, treat and dispose of hydraulic fracture flowback wastewater.
Until recently, hydraulic fracture flowback water could not be treated without high-cost chemical dosing that produced toxic residue and significant labor, transport and landfill costs.
Hydrus' Advanced ElectroChemical technology removes emulsified oil, guar gum, and other additives used in the hydraulic fracture stimulation process, while providing more cost-effective and environmentally friendly processing options. Our unique approach enables a zero liquid discharge regime and renders the water safe for re-use or discharge to the environment. It also minimizes or eliminates water transport and disposal costs.
Produced water from oil and gas
Coal Seam Gas (CSG) has a unique characteristic compared to other conventional and unconventional gas. As the gas begins to flow at the wellhead it produces a large amount of water that requires treatment. Current treatment processes produce hazardous waste and treatment plants have difficulty dealing with the produced water due to high levels of silica it contains. Silica causes blockages in filters and reduces the effectiveness of the reverse osmosis to as low as 70%.
Treatment plants will need to operate at a minimum of 90% effectiveness to cope with the required gas flow for the large LNG plants coming on-line in places such as Queensland, Australia.
Our technology reduces operating and capital expenditure. Hydrus eliminates the need for the microfiltration and ion exchange components of the current process and allows reverse osmosis treatment plants to operate at a minimum 95% effectiveness.
The output provided by Hydrus' technology is hyper saline water which is free of contaminants. This provides an opportunity to extract a byproduct salt with the potential to be sold, as opposed to the current practice of disposing contaminated brine as waste.
The increase in efficiency and capacity of the reverse osmosis plants as a result of pre-treatment of produced water utilizing Hydrus' technology allows increased volumes of CSG to be produced.
Mining solutions
Mineral recovery from iron ore tailings
Hydrus has developed a cost effective solution that enables our clients to recover a high proportion of the valuable components present in tailings from iron ore production.
Our technology has the capability to change characteristics of the contained minerals through our Advanced ElectroChemical processes. These changes are more specific, but can include either a change to the density (by removing chemically bonded water from the crystal lattice), or a change to magnetic susceptibility by altering oxidized non-magnetic components into paramagnetic or weakly magnetic forms.
Hydrus provides a solution to recover up to 67% of iron ore fines from wet processing plants. Our technology also removes other contaminants and reduces the tailings management footprint by up to 80%.
Mineral recovery from alumina tailings
Bauxite residue material (Red Mud) is the byproduct of the industrial chemical process for refining aluminum containing ores (bauxites) into alumina. Currently, there is no significant use for the estimated 3 billion tons of Red Mud stored in large tailings ponds throughout the world.
Hydrus' technology allows the treatment of Red Mud for safe use as a landfill, by removing contaminants without the use of hazardous chemicals.
From a commercial perspective, Hydrus' technology recovers up to 50% of the iron oxide from Red Mud that has a considerable commercial value.
Industrial solutions
Water treatment for steam boilers
Steam boilers are a common feature of the manufacturing and process sectors and are essential components of key industries such as mineral processing, energy and thermal power generation. Scale commonly builds up inside boilers, causing the progressive lowering of boiler efficiency by heat retardation and eventual tube overheating, rupturing and failure.
Hydrus' Advanced ElectroChemical pre-treatment, reduces scalant minerals to very low levels and removes dissolved oxygen, bicarbonate and carbonate.
The Hydrus process significantly reduces shutdown time, water treatment, disposal and replacement costs.
Non-chemical disinfection
In the last ten years water chlorination has been linked to cancers in human and aquatic species. Several halogenated methanes (THMs) found in chlorinated wastewater have since been confirmed as human carcinogens. The continued use of chlorine—in either gaseous or water soluble chemical forms such as hypochlorites— is meeting growing criticism, particularly in response to endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) formed during traditional wastewater disinfection.
Hydrus' Advanced ElectroChemical water disinfection system offers many benefits compared to chlorine, ozone and UV light. Our treatment costs are lower than high intensity UV disinfection and safer than traditional chemical alternatives.