Located approximately 200 km north of Quebec City, Canada, the Niobec Mine is the world’s first and only underground niobium mining site. This operation presented Niobec, Inc. with dual challenges: efficient management of highly saline mine water, along with maintaining a strong commitment to environmental stewardship.
Working closely with Niobec, QUA’s parent company, Aquatech, implemented an advanced, modularized, closed-loop water treatment solution to reduce water withdrawals, minimize waste, and prevent the discharge of salt-laden effluent into local waterways.
Challenges
The Niobec Mine’s wastewater contains high levels of total dissolved solids, often exceeding 25,000 ppm. The underground mining operations result in saline wastewater that contains high sulfate, sodium, chloride, and heavy metals. The mine wastewater required complex pretreatment to comply with chloride and TDS discharge standards.
Traditional methods of softening the mine water before reverse osmosis (RO) and thermal treatment would have led to excessive chemical consumption and the generation of large quantities of sludge. QUA’s Q-SEP® ultrafiltration membrane technology reduced the brine volume to the downstream thermal system, minimizing the risk of operational issues while maintaining an attractive lifecycle cost.
