July 16, 2018 - Peabody Energy will trial Science Developments’ (SciDev) OptiFlox process and wastewater treatment system at the North Goonyella mine in Queensland, Australia.

In a July 11 announcement SciDev referred to its client anonymously as “a major coking coal producer” in the Bowen Basin.

The North Goonyella underground mine, around 160km west of Mackay, employs over 220 people and produced nearly 3 million tonnes (Mt) of metallurgical coal in 2017.

Intec-owned SciDev has secured the six-month trial at the mine following the successful installation of a similar OptiFlox system at the company’s larger 12Mt/y Wilpinjong coking coal mine in New South Wales.

OptiFlox is part of a range of wastewater coagulant and flocculant products developed and manufactured by the company that are available in both liquid and powder form.

Others include BioFlox for sewage water treatment, DairyFlox for dairy waste and MaxiFlox for general purpose industrial waste including the oil and gas sector.

The North Goonyella trial will apply OptiFlox chemicals to a Phoenix Process belt press filter system in order to improve efficiency during the coal handling process; Phoenix and SciDev entered a memorandum of understanding in January 2018 to evaluate opportunities to integrate OptiFlox into Phoenix’s chemical and dewatering equipment.

Phoenix Process belt filter press

Photo by Phoenix

A further trial at a mineral sands project is expected to be announced by SciDev in the “near term”, according to a company statement. 

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