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Pure potential-Purity Systems may have the formula that will change the mining industry and lead the way to a cleaner world

A Missoula company believes it’s found a cheaper, safer and more effective way to deal with mine waste.

A silica polymer composite developed by Purity Systems Inc. binds and extracts trace metals for processing.

By Mick Holien of the Missoulian

Through the efforts of the University of Montana Chemistry Department, Purity Systems http://www.puritysystemsinc.com/ received grants that helped establish research for the project.

The company, owned by Dr. Phil Barney and George Torp, has spent more than a decade developing the nontoxic product, which recently tested favorably in Australia, opening the door for future projects.

While there’s a myriad of other possible applications, the mining industry currently is where the company’s interest lies and where the money is, said Barney, at the company’s small lab at the Montana Technology Enterprise Center (MonTec) in Missoula.

“We’re trying to stay focused on a market where we know we can commercialize it,” said Barney, a retired pathologist.

Barney founded the company with Torp in 1987. Torp has a University of Montana degree in pharmacy but became a builder and land developer.

The native Montana twosome initially funded research in the 1980s to use such technology to remove heavy metals from drinking water. That research produced a product that wasn’t good enough, said Barney.

“It did lead to development of the current products, which are very good products and the manufacturing is much easier,” he said.

The patent received five years ago opened the door to pursue commercial use.

“That was the key for us to go to market,” he said.

UM actually owns the patents, but Purity Systems has exclusive rights for their use and pays UM a royalty for everything the company produces and sells.

The company recently completed two pilot projects in Australia, recovering cobalt, nickel and copper from a mining project.

Purity Systems also has developed software with Ammtec, a Perth, Australia, company, that enables them to bid on pilot projects and turn out actual capital expense and operating expense estimates for pending mining projects.

“Ammtec is probably recognized as the best or largest metallurgist in the world,” said Torp. “They were granted an exclusive to represent Purity in Australia, southeast Asia, Malaysia and India.”

“Probably without their interaction we would still be in the lab,” he said. “They went out and successfully piloted a program for a big mining company based out of England.”

They saved $2 million on one project and $42 million on another, said Torp.

Because of the success, Purity Systems, Inc. received at least two commercial commitments for nickel/cobalt recovery from other Australian mines.

Continued success in the mining field could allow the company to expand into the environmental field.

A portable recovery unit has been successfully used for the Environmental Protection Agency to remove toxic metals from water in Belt.

“Where the mine water comes into the creek, (that) was void of life and looked like people poured cement in it,” said Torp. “We went over with a recovery unit and pumped bad water through the generator and cleaned it up.”

But currently the goal is to provide mining customers with an absorbent that exactly meets their needs, something not previously possible because competing technologies were limited in their application.

That means they must quickly streamline production of their product.

“Now we’re in the process of trying to produce large quantities of it for that,” said Barney.

That also will take further testing in Missoula, with mining extracts sent from Australia.

“It’s a fairly complex process and we’re actually still working out the kinks,” said Barney. “As we finish larger quantities, a new set of problems comes up and that’s part of this lab here, to try to make larger quantities from the bench scale up to a large enough quantity where you start seeing some of the problems of manufacturing larger quantities.”

Commercial production of 150 tons a year is scheduled to begin in March at a plant currently being built in China, according to Torp and Barney, who have visited the country 30 times in the last three years.

“We’ve got to do it there until we see if we can get it all worked out and move it back to this country,” said Torp. “If we didn’t take this offshore, I can’t see where we would be commercialized for a number of years.”

It wasn’t that the company didn’t try to produce the crystal white product in the United States. But it just wasn’t cost-effective, even if Purity Systems provided the raw material.

“We were looking at over $200 a kilo(gram) to make it,” said Barney. “We’re competing with plastic resins that are selling for $4 and $5 a pound. It’s fairly hard to compete with that kind of discrepancy.”

One selling point of the light, sandy product is the number of times it can be recycled while still remaining effective.

While Purity Systems Inc. expects to warranty its product for 3,000 cycles, laboratory tests indicate it’s effective in as many as 12,000 applications with little loss in capacity.

While polymer resins now being used in such mining applications are far cheaper by the pound, they break down after 50 or 60 cycles, said Torp, and require revitalization.

“Being able to reuse this stuff thousands of times, that’s where the economy comes in,” said Barney. “They can use it for years probably.”

“And that’s where it is,” added Torp: “Who can produce the cheapest product.”

The Missoula men would not say what it will cost to make the product in China but estimated it would sell for $60 to $95 a kilo or about $27 to $43 a pound.

“If you compare it to the cheap stuff ($4 to $5 a pound),” said Torp, “we’re far cheaper,” once you figure how many more times you can use the product.

But price isn’t the only advantage the polymer material has over synthetic resins.

Purity System’s silica-polyamine composite material is extremely stable, the men said.

“This silica base is what really gives us the advantage because it’s impervious to temperature changes and to severe pH changes,” said Barney.

It’s also effective at temperatures as high as 110 degrees compared to 70 degrees for polystyrene resins.

The technology is flexible and easy to modify for a specific metal or group of metals.

“It’s very selective too,” said Barney. “You can separate out different metals streams and concentrates.”

“We’ve found this technology effective in separating platinum and palladium, which we feel is another project that is going to open up for us because we basically have the only stuff that will do that,” he said.

Barney added that part of the reason why they think Purity products have a great future in the mining industry is that “we can actually remove the metals from tailings with this technology.”

But while there’s plenty of dumps all over the world that remain available for reclaiming, mining companies are slow to consider a new way of doing things.

“Nobody wants to be the first kid on the block using the new technology,” said Torp. “That’s the importance of the Australian application.”

“The low-grade stuff that they strip off the surface, they put it in a dump until they get down to the high-grade that they can make money on,” he said.

“They have metal in them,” added Barney. “They’re just sitting there.”

But in future years, there won’t be that luxury.

“The big – particularly copper – discoveries have been made,” Torp said. “They’re going to have to go back to the low-grade ores and with this technology they can actually mine it and make money.”

“It’s a progressive concentration process,” he said. “This is a way you can take low-level ore and remove it in an environmentally friendly manner. It’s kind of exciting.”

Mick Holien is a Missoulian reporter. You can reach him at [email protected].

© 2002, Missoulian, Missoula, MT

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