Investigation and Testing of Environment-friendly and Energy-efficient Freezing Technology for the Remediation of Mine-impacted household water

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The proposal in partnership with Core Geoscience Services Inc. (Coregeo), Whitehorse, YT, deals with technology that will be beneficial and economically feasible for the polar regions and more temperate locations worldwide. Northern Canada is of special interest considering that three of the five largest federal contaminated sites - Faro Mine, Giant Mine, Colomac Mine - are located within Yukon and Northwest Territories where a water treatment is normally required for new mine sites. The main goals of partnership are based on diverse perspectives: (a) to assist in the process of impurity separation in a cost-effective manner, with the potential to reduce government costs for remediation of contaminated mine sites; (b) to overcome knowledge gaps in the field of cryopurification of water for water reuse to develop an innovative water treatment technology; and (c) to contribute to Canada's long-term competitiveness by promoting and exporting this technology potentially to other jurisdictions as well. The outcomes of the project are planned to form a foundation for the development of an exceptional, energy efficient water treatment technology that utilizes northern climates' cold temperature conditions and has the potential to be scaled up and applied at the Faro site or other mine sites, or industrial sites. The removal of contaminants using cryopurification techniques such as freeze concentration, spray freezing and frazil ice formation, is one of the innovative water treatment concepts. It was reported based on laboratory and field data that freezing technology can be effective for the removal of both inorganic and organic contaminants from aqueous solution. However, a comprehensive investigation of zinc removal from mine-contaminated water using cryopurification technology has not been reported in the literature. Coregeo has fulfilled the preliminary tests/study on zinc removal from mine-impacted water using a range of cryopurification techniques. This led to the current partnership to deeper investigate and test the cutting-edge cryopurification technology.