A central Queensland scientist says he has developed a water cleaning method that could help allay farmers’ concerns about coal seam gas (CSG) exploration.
Farmers have expressed concerns that water pumped out during CSG exploration is too salty and causing environmental problems.
CQ University scientist Ben Kele says passing the water over special rocks will remove salt and sodium and add calcium and magnesium, which can improve soil quality.
“We’ve done full scale plants of this at Sunrise at 1770 on the Discovery Coast and we’ve done a much bigger plant at the Woodford Folk Festival site [north of Brisbane],” he said.
“Up to 50,000 people on site - we’ve been treating up to two million litres per day at the treatment plant there, so that’s a full scale operational plant.”
Mr Kele says his development means expensive desalination plants are no longer needed.
“It’s as simple as running water over rock, so it’s a lot more energy efficient than what happens with reverse osmosis desalination membranes,” he said.
“Because it’s energy efficient you’re reducing both your capital costs and your operational costs.
“These particular rocks that we found - they’ve got calcium and magnesium within their structure,
“They would much rather have sodium, so when they come into the presence of sodium they will exchange out the calcium or magnesium ion and they will bring the sodium ion into their structure.”
