Coal Seam Gas Plant to Rise in South Australia

Australian coal seam gas producer QGC has entered into an agreement with GE and Penrice Consortium to build a brine pilot plant (BPP) at Penrice's chemical works at Osborne, South Australia.

Expected to be operational in early 2012, the plant will provide new opportunities for the management of coal seam gas (CSG) water.

Aided by a technology developed by GE and Penrice Consortium, the BPP will extract salts from CSG water to produce commercial grades of sodium bicarbonate, soda ash and sodium chloride. The GE Penrice BPP is part of a wider initiative by the coal seam gas industry to investigate the technical and commercial viability of producing products like table salt and soda ash from brine, a by-product of CSG water treatment.

"Our aim is for a commercial scale plant using the GE Penrice process that will cost-effectively treat the CSG brine and produce saleable chemicals such as soda ash, sodium bicarbonate and salt, which is the business we already are in," said Guy Roberts, Penrice managing director.

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"This is another positive step in growing and diversifying Penrice's chemicals business by leveraging this salt extraction technology," he added.

"The contract with QGC is the first step in making this technology commercially scalable and is an important initiative. We will be working closely with Penrice and QGC to further develop this process and are excited by the opportunities it presents," said Irshaad Hakim, regional sales leader, engineered systems-water and process technologies for GE Power & Water.

A leading Australian CSG explorer and producer, QGC is focused on supplying cleaner hydrocarbon energy to growing domestic and international markets. It was among the first to recognise the enormous potential of CSG in Australia.

"We recognised the role that CSG will play in supplying the domestic market and the growing global liquefied natural gas (LNG) market in response to demand for cleaner energy sources," the company stated in its Web site.

QGC is currently establishing one of Australia's largest capital infrastructure projects to turn world-class reserves of CSG in the Surat and Bowen basins in Queensland into LNG - a carbon efficient fuel.

In 2009, QGC produced approximately 20% of Queensland's natural gas. QGC has agreements in place to supply China, Chile and Singapore.

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