According to the European Critical Raw Material Act, the diversification of raw material supply chains is fostered.
The Sea4Value project contributes to the diversification of raw materials sourcing and aims to secure the supply of raw materials from already existing sources.
Brines produced in seawater desalination plants are multi-mineral and are an enormous potential source of minerals and metals as 19,744 plants are installed worldwide. By now, these brines are not broadly used for the extraction of (critical) raw materials, instead the brines are discarded. See Figure 1.
The EU-funded Sea4Value project is the first attempt to recover minerals and metals from brines produced in seawater desalination plants (SWDP) in a cost-effective way. The main focus is on separating, concentrating and crystallising Molybdenum, Magnesium, Scandium, Vanadium, Gallium, Boron, Indium, Lithium, Rubidium and Calcium from brines, where they can be found in low concentrations. To do that, a multimineral and modular process is developed for brine valorisation. The implementation of brine valorisation in seawater desalination plants offers new business opportunities, which can bring value to markets, environment, and society.
With this CEN Workshop, brine valorisation, i.e. brine mining, is to be standardised so that it can serve as a building block for a secure supply of raw materials in the future. To achieve this, it is necessary to remove the barriers to the introduction of a new process and new raw materials by ensuring reliability, knowledge transfer, and quality. Common standards help remove technical barriers to trade, open up markets and make businesses more competitive.
This CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA) which has been developed by the CEN Workshop aims to provide guidance and recommendations on best practices for sustainable brine valorisation to ensure transfer of innovation into practice. The guidance refers on the processing of brines to recover minerals and metals and on the properties of the recovered minerals and metals.
In order to achieve a common understanding, a language for describing brine valorisation needs to be developed as well as terms and system boundaries of brine valorisation need to be defined.
Moreover, the CWA describes, explains, and agrees on the core process steps of brine valorisation. This includes advice on the fundamental prerequisites pre-treatment, key (technologic) elements/ methods and post-treatment are specified and recommendations for planning, design, implementation and operation are given.
The CWA provides recommendations on good practice approaches, advice on the requirements of circularity in SWDP as well as considerations on environmental and economic impacts and evaluation. Besides the recommendations for the process of brine valorisation, recommendations are also be made for the recovered product, the minerals and metals, to ensure that the new products meet the market demand.
The CEN Workshop Agreement is intended to be used by operators of seawater desalination plants, engineering companies, end-users, traders and distributer of recovered minerals and metals as well as government and environmental authorities.
The CWA does not provide guidance and recommendations for sustainable valorisation of brines that are not produced in seawater desalination plants.