MGX Minerals burnishes clean energy credentials as partner PurLucid gets C$8.2mln in government funding

MGX Minerals Inc (CSE: XMG, OTCQB: MGXMF) has burnished its clean energy credentials, saying its engineering partner had received C$8.2mln in government funding to advance its petrolithium technology.

Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) and Emissions Reduction Alberta (ERA) have agreed to fund up to $3.2 million and $5 million, respectively, to support the development of a low energy water treatment system for the oil and gas industry.

“Treatment of wastewater has always been a challenge and significant cost to oil and gas producers; it is also essential to implement petrolithium recovery, said Dr Preston McEachern, the chief executive and founder of the MGX partner PurLucid.

“We’re grateful to receive support from SDTC and ERA in the form of development contributions, to build the first commercial system at an operating oil production facility in Alberta and to demonstrate the large cost and energy savings that can be achieved with these systems.

“It is exciting, as this opens the door to further processing of the treated water for petrolithium recovery.”

MGX currently owns a 34% interest in Purlucid and has the right to acquire 100% through successive future investments.

Working with MGX, Purlucid came up with and filed patent applications for apparatus and methods for brine treatment and selective lithium recovery that integrates with the MGX Petrolithium Recovery Process, greatly reducing the cost of recovery and enhancing the quality across the complex range of brines received from oil and gas wells.

The technology allows high temperature water treatment at 10-30 times the efficiency of existing ultrafiltration systems and offers numerous environmental benefits, including contaminant removal, mineral recovery, reduced energy demand, smaller footprints and lower capital costs, MGX said.

The building of the first small commercial Purlucid lithium recovery system will be completed in December this year, ready for use in 2018 on the treated brines from the grant supported project and other MGX brines successfully trialed with the bench-scale and pilot systems.

Story by ProactiveInvestors