PWN (ASX) general chat/ thoughts

Originally posted by seismicguy: ↑

@NemesisAu

Thanks for all the time and effort, much appreciated.

Just by way of background, the previous work that Dr Hayes refers to is the GE-Penrice Brine Processing tech piloted in Osborne, SA.

In 2011, QGC, back when it was owned by BG Group (pre-Shell acqn), awarded a contract to the GE-Penrice Consortium to design, build and operare a pilot plant for the selective salt recovery from csg brines based on tech developed by Penrice Soda over many years (asx - PSH). PSH was very excited, at the time, by their technology and claimed that it produced saleable chemicals, clean water and near zero waste.

The pilot plant was in operation from 2012-14, however it is worth bearing in mind PSH was facing enormous financial and operational issues at the time in their core chemical processing operations which ended in PSH's demise. Shortly after PSH's bankruptcy Shell acquired QGC and set about increasing production requiring improving significant portions of the wastewaster infrastructure, so they had more pressing issues. The other partner in the group, GE Water, was divested by GE and sold to SUEZ in 2017 which itself was sold to Veolia in 2021. So a lot the operational and technical data from this plant is, presumably, now with Veolia.

Certainly there were operability, maintability and opex issues with the pilot, however PSH at the time of operations, via asx announcements, maintained that the plant was profitable and the tech could be scaled (?).

From memory it was also targeted by protesters after APPEA highlighted the tech in response to the ABC.

Anyway, FWIW:

GE news feed Oct 2011:

https://www.ge.com/news/press-releases/ge-and-penrice-consortium-trial-converting-coal-seam-gas-brine-saleable-products-0

Extract from APPEA's media release back in the day (more than 10 years)

The Penrice patent ceased (for non-payment of fees) in 2017.

http://pericles.ipaustralia.gov.au/ols/auspat/applicationDetails.do?applicationNo=2011202102

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Thanks for this information seismicguy, very interesting.
Also, great to see you're still keeping an eye on Parkway.

From my understanding, none of the previous SSR techs come close to what Parkway's technology claim they can produce as high-grade saleable products. Below is a table of various trials, pilots etc undertaken by CSG players since 2008.

From the APPEA Supply and Management Report (slides 47,48 & 59) - Queensland Gas: end-to-end water use, supply and management - Report - 2018: the voice of Australia's oil and gas industry (des.qld.gov.au)

The reports conclusion:
"Initial preliminary studies into beneficial use options culminated in selective salt recovery
being identified as the most likely candidate for a whole of industry beneficial use option.
However further detailed investigations showed that this option is infeasible as:
• the SSR technology has not been demonstrated at a commercial scale, and the technology
vendors would not provide plant performance guarantees, leaving the gas industry with
significant risk that could only be eliminated by also constructing a salt disposal facility
• the SSR technology has the highest up front and lifecycle costs of any of the brine
management options considered
• the adoption of SSR would result in significant additional resource (energy) consumption
and negative environmental and social impacts
• entry of new salt into the market place would also likely cause displacement of existing
established suppliers from the market, as market research did not identify any unmet
demand for salt."

Note that this information is based on technologies from 5-15 years ago and this report was published in 2018.
Technologies have progressed since.

Maybe some questions here @MrMozambique can follow up with Bahay when they next chat.