Reuse of Mines for Geothermal Water

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Scotland is embarking on reusing mines in the Lanarkshire area with a major £31m project - the mines are coal and historically are the classic situations that the Victorians were masters of - pumping stations and sound engineering concepts.  Except of course, the realisation that the vast volumes of water in Coal and associated Mines are full of heavy minerals.  The remit Scottish companies and Academia are using for this project is renewable heat energy to be transferred to housing and urban heating projects.  However having followed a few conversations on this site there looks to be a huge range of interesting and pivotal views on the risks of Sulphides, Cadnium, Arsenic, Mercury,  it would be good to hear what people have to say, noting that in the aims of decarbonising, are we running close to the edge of our capabilities with regards to keeping water clean? Bearing in mind that changes in Water pressure unlike Fracking have a greater risk of breaching potable water let alone subsidence

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4 Answers

  1. Avivid Water Technology, LLC has had very good success in removing arsenic, heavy metals and other contaminants from metal and coal mine water.  Check our website: www.avividwater.com and if you have a further interest or questions contact me at lockett.wood@avividwater.com. 

  2. Is there a nearby industrial site or cluster that can use the treated water.  In our experience this would give the project the extra value it needed.  Disposing of the water after treatment is expensive so it should have a value to someone.  We would like to be involved in the project scoping - how do we go about that please Philip?

  3. It sounds as if the water will also be quite acidic, so it will surely need to be stabilized to protect the heat transfer piping, pumps, etc.  This can be done with lime or limestone/lime combination, which can precipitate out most of the heavy metals and actually reduce the TDS.  This will however result in a sludge which must be separated and used or disposed of.  The other challenge is that the sulphides/sulphates will not be removed by lime precipitation.  You also don't want to lose heat energy during the treatment process, so you may want to consider a closed system with stabilization coupled with a rapid clarifier such as a magnetic assisted separation using magnetite a a coagulant aid.  It sounds though it can get to be quite complicated. As Daniel Dean says - also depends on the final disposal of the water after use.  

  4. Can the water be re-injected after heat extraction, or will it need to be discharged to local surface water?

    1 Comment

    1. I think it could be re-injected but I doubt very much whether the geotechnical risks have been assessed to a great level of detail yet. Im sure there will be a lot of attention on this.