Minsorb
Minsorb is a wholly owned subsidiary of Blue Pacific Minerals Ltd.
The primary product in Minsorbs portfolio is “Aqual P”, the trade name of a recently developed phosphate scavenging material used primarily in the remediation of large lake bodies in the Rotorua area of New Zealand.
The development of Aqual P began with laboratory work undertaken, initially, by University of Waikato and then continued by Scion, a Crown Research Institute, based in Rotorua.
The problem is the demise, and subsequent required remediation, of the Rotorua Lakes. Regular and intensive algal blooms within many of the Rotorua Lakes have, along with the decreasing decline in water quality, triggered substantial government funding targeted at a remediation plan to bring the lake water quality back to “acceptable” levels within a defined time period.
This has meant that some form of intervention of existing processes will be required, along with environmental programs (both farming and urban council based) directed at gradual reduction of external nutrient inputs in to the lakes.
Aqual P has been trialled in a whole lake situation in Lake Okaro, a small eutrophic lake, located south of Rotorua city. This trail work has covered a number of years and a substantial amount of technical input and overseeing by credible agencies such as NIWA, University of Waikato, Scion, and EBOP. The results from this work have been produced and will be published shortly.
Generally speaking, the results show that, with a collaborative effort involving both management of external nutrient loads, and applying a sediment cap to eliminate/minimize the release of internal nutrient loads, the quality of L Okaro water has improved markedly. Aqual P has been shown to be the only sediment capping device to adsorb both phosphate and ammonium in a large lake body application.
Aqual P is now under further development to produce a water dispersible granule that will allow accurate placement/spread-pattern on the water surface, rapid settling rate of the granule, and therefore accurate and efficient sediment coverage, but also to allow a range of economic delivery/application vehicles to be used.
Aqual P also has the very real potential to be recycled once it has reached a cation saturation point. This is a significant environmental advance in traditional water treatment media.
Forecasts show that we will have commercial quantities of Aqual P in a water dispersible form, available by Dec 2010.
Other applications include:
Aquaculture. A management tool to control nutrient levels and algal biomass in intensive fishfarming.
Waste water. A granular, powdered, or water dispersible granule form that can be applied to inline water treatment systems.
Decorative ponds. Golf courses, subdivisions, and urban parks generally include water feature ponds – whether natural or man-made. These tend to accumulate local water courses carrying both nutrient rich sediment and soluble ions which produce algal problems. Aqual P can be designed to remove nutrient from both the water body itself and also as a sediment capping device giving both short term and long term results.