South Australian manufacturer Penrice has completed its pilot program to produce table salt and soda ash from brine, a by-product of coal seam gas water treatment.
It now waits on a decision from coal seam gas explorers to see if sale of the technology can assist the company turn around its debt-laden fortunes.
The program – dubbed potentially “company transforming” by Penrice – started in October 2011.
Shares in Penrice slumped on low volume trades yesterday, down to 6.5 cents, half its price at the start of 2013 and well down on its $1 mark of 2009 and double that three years previous.
A spokesman for coal seam gas explorer QGC Pty Ltd, the company which commissioned the Selected Salts Recovery (SSR) pilot, told InDaily it expected to make a decision on its salt treatment options later this year.
“A Penrice-GE consortium was contracted by QGC in 2011 to do a pilot study of salt recovery technology in Adelaide as one of four international studies,” QGC’s Paul Larter said.
“This study has been completed, as have studies in France, the US and Germany. “QGC expects to select its preferred salt treatment option in late 2013.”
Penrice formed a consortium with New York-based GE in 2011 to design, build and operate a brine pilot plant (BPP) at Penrice’s chemical works at Osborne.
“The primary objective of the BPP is to demonstrate the ability of the GE-Penrice process to extract and selectively precipitate salts such as sodium bicarbonate, sodium carbonate and sodium chloride from the final brine streams,” Penrice said at the time.
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“The BPP will be based on technology developed by the GE and Penrice Consortium, for the purpose of extracting salts from CSG water and produce commercial grades of sodium bicarbonate, soda ash and sodium chloride.”
Earlier this year, Penrice said the project was a key to its future.
“Penrice believes that successful commercialisation of its SSR technology is company transforming, giving it the potential to earn licensing income from the technology as well as income from associated technical and marketing services,” the company said in its half-yearly report.
“Penrice’s main focus is working with its consortium partners to finalise a bid to win a commercial scale SSR plant for the QGC/APLNG group in 2013.” Penrice said today it had no comment to make on the pilot program’s chances of being accepted, citing “commercial in confidence”.
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