Joint Venture Article: BacTech’s new process harvests metals, fertilizer from mine waste

There are piles of mine waste across the globe. Much of that waste is rich in low-grade metals, but they’re costly and complex to process. 

Now, BacTech Environmental (CSE: BAC; US-OTC: BCCEF) is rewriting that story. The Toronto-based company’s newly patented bioleaching process promises to recover valuable metals like nickel and cobalt. But it will also turn waste into products like fertilizer and iron feedstock, delivering both environmental and economic wins.

Devan Murugan, video host at Mining.com, recently caught up with Paul Miller, vice-president of technology and engineering at BacTech in Perth, Australia, where the company has run trial programs. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. A video can be seen here.

Devan Murugan:
So what exactly does this new process do and what makes it a breakthrough in dealing with mine waste?

Paul Miller:
Well, as you've just alluded to, the new process is designed to treat low-grade mining waste, recovering the residual metals of value, but also generating these value-added products of iron for steelmaking and also fertilizer.

The important difference in our process is that by actually generating these value-added products of iron for steel making and fertilizer, it really justifies the recovery of these low-grade metal values. And these metals can include precious metals, platinum group metals, and of course critical minerals like nickel and cobalt and rare earth elements.

We're using a microbial technique by leaching which specifically targets pyrite and pyrrhotite mineralization which is pretty common in most major mining operations. Yet tnvese lie in substantial amounts of waste on the land and they create problems related to acid mine drainage and nobody has yet really come up with a way of being able to repurpose these minerals of pyrite and pyrrhotite which are contained in the waste.

And yet by doing so, we're able then to justify the recovery of these low-grade metal values. So existing approaches really have been unable to split the iron from sulphur and create useful commodities from this waste. And because we generate these additional products, we're producing commodities in completely diverse markets. It really reduces the investor risk for getting involved in these long-term mining projects where we're treating low-grade metal values because we're diversifying the investment risk into creating these additional products.

DM:
Now, it's described as a zero-waste solution, but beyond that what are its green credentials?

PM:
The important aspect is that we don't use any heating process, so we're not using something like roasting, which generates a lot of sulphur, sulphurous gases. And it's a water-based leaching process, so we're using bio-leaching followed by a unique series of steps in which we can isolate the iron and sulphur values, as well as creating metal value products, which we can market directly.

Secondly, ammonia is our primary reagent used in the process. And of course, most people recognize that ammonia is becoming a green reagent, which is used for transporting hydrogen around the world. And we believe that by using this type of reagent, we will have access to a reagent of the future.

Thirdly, of course, it's sustainable. We are creating an ammonium sulphate fertilizer which is almost an organic because we're using biological techniques to generate that and of course the metals of value that we recover they're also through a sustainable process.

DM:
Now, you've managed to turn iron and sulphur, previously considered worthless, into usable products. How big is that of a shift for the mining industry?

PM:
It's huge because really what we're doing is addressing a long-term problem of how do you split iron from sulphur to be able to create products of sufficient purity that they can feed into the industries like steel making and also fertilizer production. It's one thing to be able to separate those elements but to create purity levels of those elements which you can feed into the required industriesis truly unique. 

DM:
So you're getting investors looking at this and asking, is this process scalable enough to be adopted across global mine sites?

PM:
Yes, absolutely. It was a first consideration when we were generating the concept, just recognizing that there are millions of tons of tailings lying about and it had to be a process that could treat that waste at considerable scale. And we feel comfortable with that because we're using equipment which has been demonstrated at considerable scale in previous processes. And also, of course, both the iron and the fertilizer production industries are very used to managing very large quantities of feedstocks to go into their process. 

DM:
Paul, what kind of expertise is needed for this thing to work in the field? 

PM:
The skills required are reasonably basic. We think that geographically, the processes are amenable to a wide variety of environments, be they harsh temperature environments or environments where there are very low skill levels available. We haven't used complex equipment like water claves or anything of that nature which require intensive maintenance during operations so we truly believe that this is a unique process which is applicable to many areas in the world.

DM:
I heard you hint to this little earlier in one of the other answers. How do you see this technology impacting industries beyond mining? I mean, particularly when you look at fertilizer and the iron sector.

PM:
If we take the iron sector, for example, we're targeting the technology at potentially mines that are not producing iron for steel making because their iron values in terms of pyrite and pyrrhotite are being discarded as waste. We potentially have new players coming into the iron ore industry, which were not there before. And this could create a brand new remodeling of the iron ore industry by having these players that are maybe producing nickel and cobalt at the moment and their iron is going to waste. We can now redirect that iron into steel making.  

For ammonium fertilizer production, what we're really saying here is that you can take an iron sulphide mineral lying on the ground which is creating an environmental challenge and we can take that commodity and turn it into iron for steel making, and ammonium sulphate fertilizer, without the need for iron ore or indeed sulphur or sulphuric acid to make the fertilizer.

DM:
What you want to do is get this out of the lab and into commercial deployment as fast as possible. How far are we from that?

PM:
We've been working for two years now on the actual concept both here in Australia and in Canadian laboratories to actually prove up the process. We're comfortable that we've reached the stage in which we have shown that the process will actually work and that's what's led to the filing of the full patent now. We actually think the pathway to development is relatively simple.

We will need to go through piloting stages, a demonstration plant, and also build a prototype commercial facility. But we think that we can fast-track by virtue of using equipment which the industry is familiar with. And the chemistry that we're using is well known. So, we're not anticipating any huge surprises in the scale-up routines that would be needed to commercialize the technology.

DM:
My final question then is on the licensing front. Would BacTech roll this out or is licensing the route to global adoption here?

PM:
Yes, it has to be a licensing way forward. And clearly what we're looking towards is attracting investors that really see the groundbreaking uniqueness of this type of technology because it is a game changer for many industries and also allows investors, as I've said before, to get involved in projects where we're creating diverse revenue streams which really de-risk the process of being reliant on metal prices.

DM:
Thanks very much indeed and it's very interesting. BacTech's Paul Miller, thanks for talking to us.

PM:
No, thank you.

The preceding Joint Venture Article is PROMOTED CONTENT sponsored by BacTech Environmental and produced in co-operation with The Northern Miner Group. Visit: https://bactechgreen.com/ for more information.