BioteQ Environmental Technologies Inc., a waste water treatment company focussing on mines has won an Environmental excellence award from Globe Foundation.

BioteQ was honoured for the water-treatment plants it designs and operates at mines around the world, using a proprietary system that removes acid and heavy metals from runoff water leeching from mine sites – a major environmental headache for mining companies for decades.
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“[The companies] outsource the whole water-treatment issue to us, we manage the water, we build the plant and run it, and generally we create a financially sustainable treatment process, in that the sale of metals from the process sustains the treatment plant …”

The amount of cleaned water runs to billions of litres. For example, BioTeq cleaned 920 million litres of acid-waste water from Xstrata’s Raglan nickel-copper mine in northern Quebec last year. Mr. Marchant says the processed water was safe enough to be used in the sensitive arctic ecosystem of Nunavik – something unthinkable in the past.
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Currently, the method most mining companies still use to stop acid water from leeching into the ecosystem involves catching the tainted water with lime, resulting in a toxic sludge that must be carefully stored. The expense is considerable – as is the waste, notes Mr. Marchant.
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In the BioteQ system, a mixture of sulphur-loving bacteria neutralizes the acid in the water, leaving behind the heavy metals that come away in the mining process, such as copper, zinc, nickel, cobalt and selenium. These metals can then be sold on the market.