On Tuesday 4 May 2021 all project partners and our project monitor, Irune Osés, met in an on-line meeting (due to the COVID-19 situation) organized by FUB to review the project actions progress since the last review meeting (June 2020). Specifically, this meeting focused on discussing how our project and the performance of the pilot plant have been affected by COVID-19 and to define the extension period required to achieve the project objectives at the end of the project. Firstly, we reviewed the general technical status of the project, followed by a specific review of the different Actions performed, and a general discussion among all project partners and our project monitor to define the next steps to be accomplished.
Due to COVID pandemic and the movement restrictions, the DEMINE pilot plant was collected from Frongoch in March 2020 and installed in ELENTEC facilities to continue working on its performance optimization. During this period, we have generated data regarding basic equipment performance (e.g. power consumption), sludge production trials (UF module performance) and metals removal performance. However, there is still need to continue operating in Frongoch to assure the good performance of the system, and therefore, the pilot plant will be re-deployed to Frongoch as soon as possible according to COVID situation to operate as originally planned.
In parallel, a second prototype is being built and it will be installed in Germany next September 2021. This prototype has been tested at bench scale by ELENTEC and Swansea University. It includes a reverse osmosis module to deal with the high salinity concentration of the mining effluent coming from the potash abandoned mine in Germany, and results from its performance are highly satisfactory.
