By RANDY GRIFFITH
ST. MICHAEL — An innovative acid-mine-drainage treatment system introduced here Monday could transform some lifeless streams into chemical production plants that clean the water.
“For too long, we’ve seen environmental problems as liabilities,” state Environmental Protection Secretary Kathleen McGinty said at the pilot plant. “The governor’s office would like to change those problems into economic opportunities.”
The treatment plant set up at a St. Michael mine-shaft discharge site is removing sulfates and metal from about 30 gallons of water a minute, said Dick Conkle, a research leader for Battelle Memorial Institute.
The Columbus, Ohio, research and development organization adapted a process to extract chemicals, purifying the water.
Many of the chemicals have commercial applications in fertilizer and wastewater treatment.
“It doesn’t matter what metals are in there,” Battelle chemist Bruce Monzyk said.
“It gathers them all up and concentrates them.”
Current active-treatment systems use limestone to neutralize the acid, leaving sulfates and metal in the water, Monzyk said.
“There was not a science basis to start with,” he said. “We had to invent that.”
In the “value extraction” process, pollutants are removed by putting the water through a stripper, which puts the compounds into an organic oil extractant. Sulfates, metals and other impurities are taken from the oil, which is then returned to the strippers to purify more water. The extracted compounds can be processed and packaged for marketing, Conkle said.
Working with Winner Energy and Environmental Services of Sharon, Mercer County, Battelle scientists first tested the system last year in the lab. Its success there led to the pilot project in St. Michael.
The entire plant is mounted on flatbed trailers inside a Quonset hut.
If it works on the larger scale, the two companies plan to construct a football field-sized plant in St. Michael to treat the entire discharge. Pollution from the abandoned St. Michael mine accounts for 30 percent of the pollution in the Little Conemaugh River.
“If we can do 30 gallons a minute, we can do 5,000 gallons a minute. There’s no question,” Winner Global founder Jim Winner Jr. said.
So far, the state has funded about $1.5 million of the $4.4 million project through Growing Greener II funding.
“This is a very substantial investment,” McGinty said. “We’ve made it because of the environmental benefit, but also because of the commercial potential of this process.”
