EXPLORATION ’93 — Alberta brine deposits host industrial

An industrial minerals industry based on substantial brine deposits is unfolding in Alberta.

Under investigation are potential deposits scattered throughout the province, five of which have been identified so far.

A group of scientists funded by Alberta’s first federal-provincial Mineral Development Agreement (MDA) is scouting locations for six industrial chemicals: calcium, magnesium, potassium, lithium, iodine and bromine. Project leader Stefan Bachu said the research has entered its second year. Criteria to determine the economic potential of the five areas are based on other sedimentary basin mines around the world and brine extraction operations in the Michigan Basin.

Calcium, magnesium and potassium deposits were identified in the Beaver Hill Lake group in southern Alberta, as well as near Elk Point in central Alberta. West-central Alberta (specifically the Swan Hills area) yielded a lithium deposit within that region’s Devonian Reef formation.

Iodine and bromine showed high potential in the centre of the province, near Viking, and also at Bailey River in the southwest.

The purpose of studying brine in Alberta’s sedimentary basin is to persuade the local mining industry to focus less on energy resources and more on other mineral commodities.

“Everyone is looking at energy in the sedimentary basin — oil, gas and coal,” said Bachu. “Generally, the other mineral resources have been overlooked and dwarfed by energy.”

Although the industry remains focused on oil and gas, brine deposits offer one means of diversifying the economy. Some of that diversification has already started.

Millar Western Industries has established a small magnesium sulphate plant near its pulp mill in Whitecourt. The company ships the naturally forming mineral from a south-central location and creates, by means of a chemical process, magnesium oxide. The magnesium oxide is used to bleach paper products at the company’s two pulp mills, one of which is in Whitecourt, the other in Meadow Lake, Sask.

The 4-year-old magnesium sulphate plant also sells product throughout Western Canada. Gil Heim, Millar’s vice-president of chemicals, believes there is strong potential for growth.

“Growth should occur,” he said, “as mills completely change over to oxygen delignification paper bleaching” (as opposed to chlorine-based bleaching, which poses more of a threat to the natural environment).

Growth in the magnesium market is also expected in the automotive industry, specifically with regard to that sector’s light-weight properties. There is currently a trend toward light-weighting of automotive vehicles, and magnesium is being considered for certain applications along those lines, said Patrick Chevalier, magnesium commodity officer with the federal government. He added, however, that Alberta’s brine study is only beginning to identify that province’s magnesium potential. As of yet, nothing has been discovered which can compare with the rich magnesium-bearing dolomite formations in Ontario and British Columbia.

Economics and technological developments will ultimately determine the mining potential of Alberta’s brine deposits. Using the pulp and paper industry as a case in point, potential for brine may grow as public opinion sways toward the use of (relatively) environmentally safe chemicals in such processes as paper bleaching.

Nevertheless, Alberta’s deposits must compete with established practices, such as the obtaining of magnesium from magnesium chloride (a main constituent of sea water). Dow Chemical has perfected that process at its operations in Texas.

Today, calcium is mainly used as calcium chloride. Its chief applications are de-icing, dust control, production of concrete products, and oil well drilling. While it has many other specific uses, there are few large-scale immediate uses on the horizon.

Potassium sulphate, now being mined in neighboring Saskatchewan, is employed as a fertilizer.

The onus is now on the MDA researchers to demonstrate that brine extraction in Alberta is economically viable, said Dennis Kostash, chairman of the Alberta Regional Committee of the Canadian Chemical Producers Association and manager of Division Services for Dow Chemical in Alberta.

Based on the researchers’ work to date, the evidence may not be long in coming. Indeed, a brine boom in Alberta may be around the corner. — The author is a freelance writer in St. Albert, Alta.