 | The Finance Round-Up: November 23rd 2007 | The Oil Drum: Canada | The Finance Round-Up: November 29th 2007 |  |
6 comments on The Earth and Energy Round-Up: November 28th 2007
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
User login
Archives
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
GAIA Host Collective
Hello Stoneleigh,
Future climate change and the myth of Canadian water could have dire repercussions in Potash of Saskatchewan's future output as their benefication process requires lots of water. This could have worldwide ramifications if insufficient quantities of element K cannot be combined with N & P for efficient photosynthesis.
http://www.iied.org/mmsd/mmsd_pdfs/065_ifa.pdf
--------------------------------
Environmental Considerations in Potash Mining and Processing
Potash mining activities may affect the quality of air, water, and land. The beneficiation of potash ores normally results in large volumes of waste materials including brines, slimes containing clay, and salt tailings.
The disposal methods most frequently used include:
• Stacking of salt tailings on the surface.
• Retention of wastes such as brines and slimes in dams or ponds.
• Controlled release of wastes from lined retention ponds into rivers and oceans.
• Backfilling of mined underground openings with salt tailings and fines.
• Deep well injection of brines.
• Recovery of other mineral by-products
-------------------------------------
The gradual depletion of hydropower from climate change drought, plus area FF-depletion, plus less water for solution mining and factory beneficiation, plus more energy & equipment to further extend the 3300 ft deep and 5,000 km web of tunnels = much higher costs to produce and process potash.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
What Ho Toto, Just took a roam over the wide open prairies and fell down a big gopher hole, see here:
http://www.saskschools.ca/~gregory/sask/potash.html
and learning from the following site found there to be Potash at 30 to 36% with insolubles at 5.5% and I guess in the rest what amounts to be enough table salt to satisfy the food processing industry's desire to cause world wide high blood pressure.
http://technology.infomine.com/hydrometmine/papers/Potash%20Processing%2...
They don't mention here where the water ends up, as they do in the site you mentioned, but one would think there would or could be be a high degree of recovery and that most of the tailings could eventually be put returned to that large gopher hole. I think there could be a lot of use made of the sun as well as temperature differences between summer and winter to some of the processing.
Love those potash mines though, don't you? The only other source I know of are trees and it takes a lot of trees to make a little potash. That's where I get some of my potash, out of my wood burning stove, lots of wood goes in but little ash comes out.