Rockburst and Tersa: Pioneering Sustainable Mining Innovations

A new way of breaking rocks

Among the innovators featured at the event was Vancouver-based Rockburst Technologies.

The company tackles an early stage of the mining process, reducing mined rock to a consistent size for use in the concentration process. To that end, the company has focused on developing its CoreBurst technology, which fundamentally changes how the comminution process is carried out.

Typically, mined ore is crushed and milled — that is to say, it is pushed or ground down. Rockburst suggests that these compression techniques are inefficient, and that mineral structure is more resistant to this type of liberation.

Instead, Rockburst uses a process called transcritical CO2 pulverization. It injects CO2 into ore at high pressure, and when that pressure is released, it breaks the rocks from the inside.

The company states that the process uses 50 percent less energy than traditional methods, making it more efficient. Additionally, the rocks themselves become carbon sinks, trapping the CO2 used.

During Web Summit's "Global Scale: The BC Hub for Next-Gen Resource and Energy Tech" panel, Rockburst CEO Oscar Malpica said that creating new mining technology can be an uphill battle, and it starts with funding.

He explained that companies need to validate their concept before asking for money.

“When you’re in hard tech, your prototypes, or at least in my case, my prototype, is a 3 meter tall, massive machine … but just to build that thing, it takes C$2 million,” he said.

Malpica noted that while Rockburst's technology is designed to tackle challenges sitting at the heart of the mining industry, it can still be difficult to change minds and adopt new innovations.

For example, the shift from physical to thermodynamic methods of breaking down ore has raised safety issues, with some suggesting the process is too dangerous to use. Part of the problem is that the process is still new; there are no regulations governing its implementation and safe application.

Malpica is aware this will need to be dealt with over the next three years.

“The mining industry is a very conservative, very traditional industry — very hard to break into. For us, what works is coming to the lab to see what we are doing. Open invitation to see our 3 meter tall prototype working and doing all the dirty stuff, and look at the before and after,” he told the audience.

That's not to say Rockburst hasn’t generated interest — it’s received support from Natural Resources Canada, the University of BC, the South Australian government and mining industry giant BHP (ASX:BHP,NYSE:BHP,LSE:BHP).

Remediation as part of the solution

Another firm on the panel was Tersa Critical Minerals, represented by Barinder Rasode, its co-founder and CEO.

Tersa has been developing its own proprietary microbial fuel cell and microbially induced calcite precipitation technologies designed to extract critical minerals from mining waste, leaving clean water behind.

The process can extract critical minerals such as copper, lithium and cobalt from waste at 90 percent recovery. This means cleaner water for affected areas and increased mineral production for miners.

Although Tersa and Rockburst focus on different aspects of the mining cycle, their challenges are similar, with Rasode also acknowledging the need for funding and finding willing partners.

“Mining companies are very open to innovation, but they worry about liability, and so we, in response to our customers, made sure we’re building a unit that does not increase liability because it’s modular," she said.

"Until you address the issue of liability, it is a challenge. And then funding is the chicken or the egg — we’ll get a customer, and then we’ll fund you. I think that’s a universal challenge,” Rasode added.

Despite the company's relative youth, it's been able to find industry partners looking to deploy its technologies, including Newmont (NYSE:NEM,ASX:NEM), which is looking to use the Tersa system at its Equity silver site in Central BC.

The mine was in operation between 1980 and 1994, and was at one time the province’s largest silver mine, delivering more than 2.2 million kilograms of silver. The pilot project came about after Tersa partnered with the Wet’suwet’en First Nation’s Yinka Dene Economic Development General Partnership, which wanted to clean up the contaminated site.

Environmental policies are business policies

The mining industry is incredibly complex. On the one hand, government regulations dictate how companies need to operate from an environmental and social standpoint; on the other, it overlaps with sound business decisions.

Rockburst and Tersa are two BC-based companies working at different avenues in the same industry to achieve similar goals, but they didn’t happen overnight. Rasode noted that without programs like Canada's Industrial Research Assistance Program, or BHP’s venture capital arm, Tersa’s innovations wouldn’t have been possible.

For his part, Malpica, spoke to being nimble, taking it one step at a time and working closely with industry partners to build technology from the ground up that requires less energy and cost inputs, while returning better results.

These technologies can take time to go from idea to widespread industry adoption, but they have the potential to reshape how mining is done, and deliver better returns for miners and in environmentally responsible ways.

As both leaders mentioned, the mining sector isn’t afraid of innovation, but also isn’t quick to adopt new systems or techniques — it wants proven technologies that can deliver returns for shareholders, and that takes time.

“The humble beginnings of a company is just engaging your customers right from the very beginning and just making use of the resources that you have at hand,” Malpica said.