TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Canadian clean-technology firm Orbite Aluminae has received a ‘notice of allowance’, indicating that it would be granted a US patent for its red mud treatment process.

The Montreal-based firm on Friday reported that the United States Patent and Trademark Office had issued the notice of allowance for patent application No 14/371, 364.

Orbite, which was currently converting its high-purity alumina production plant, at Cap-Chat, in Quebec, into a "state-of-the-art", full-scale, 1 t/d facility, had in January received a notice of allowance by the Canadian Intellectual Property Office.

Following the favourable opinion in terms of novelty, inventive steps and industrial applicability received by Orbite for its international application, the company filed national-phase entries in various countries and used the Patent Prosecution Highway, where allowed, to accelerate the patent application examination and patent issuance processes. The US and Canadian red mud patent applications were treated under this accelerated process, Orbite noted.                             

Red mud was the waste product generated by the Bayer process, the industrial process used for refining bauxite to obtain alumina, the raw material from which aluminium was produced. The waste product currently represented a long-term environmental liability for the entire alumina industry.

The Orbite process was able to use red mud as a feedstock, extracting the valuable constituents, including rare earths and rare metals, alumina, magnesium oxide and titanium dioxide, while only returning a small fraction of material. In this way, the Orbite process could contribute to converting an environmental and financial liability into an asset.

“With more than three-billion tonnes of red mud stored globally, two patents confirmed and more on the way, as well as the recently announced $4.5-million conditional grant from Sustainable Development Technologies Canada, Orbite is well positioned to pursue the commercial opportunity its groundbreaking waste monetisation technology represents,” Orbite CEO Glenn Kelly said in a statement.

He added that the company also saw a “considerable opportunity” in using this technology for fly ash monetisation. Fly ash, of which some 71-million tonnes was produced in the US every year, was like red mud, a significant financial and environmental liability for communities and companies. 

“As fly ash has a similar composition to red mud, much value is currently wasted. With our technology, we believe it is possible to generate significant value from these waste ponds, [while] simultaneously addressing economic and environmental issues,” Kelly noted.