Consol Energy has selected Veolia Water to design, build and operate a mine water treatment system to be located near Mannington, W.Va.
Veolia Water will be treating mine water from CONSOL’s Blacksville #2, Loveridge, and Robinson Run mining operations with its Zero Liquid Waste Discharge system. The system will treat high-volume mine water with numerous constituents.
The agreement includes a 10-year operating partnership, plus additional 5-year options to operate the facility. Construction is scheduled to begin in July, with full operation expected to begin by May 2013.
“Veolia is the perfect partner with which to collaborate,” said Katharine Fredriksen, CONSOL senior vice president environmental strategy and regulatory affairs. “They bring design and operational experience with over 75 Zero Liquid Discharge plants around the world.”
The project is expected to create approximately 200 construction jobs over the next two and a half years and will require about 20 permanent employees to operate the facility.
In other water news, LG Electronics and Hitachi Plant Technologies have formed a joint venture in the water business. The JV, LG-Hitachi Water Solutions Co., Ltd., is scheduled to be established in October 2011, with LGE providing 51 percent of the capital and Hitachi Plant Technologies 49 percent.
The new company will initially focus on manufacturing and sales of water treatment equipment, centered mainly in Korea, with plans for future expansion in other countries.
LGE's water business, which started with domestic water purifiers, has recently extended into development of various types of membranes. Hitachi has been in the water business for almost a century and today focuses on advanced water circulation systems, particularly membrane and biological treatment systems that employ information technology.
And at a pilot facility in Singapore, Siemens says it has more than halved the energy needed to desalinate seawater, according to Environmental Protection. The plant uses an electric field to remove salt, consuming 1.5 kWh of electricity per cubic meter, to process 50 cubic meters of water per day. The most efficient desalination technique in use today is reverse osmosis, which uses more than twice that much energy, EP said.
